Death in the City, page 3
‘I’d work on the assumption that he wasn’t put in before high water,’ Sergeant Burgess said. ‘Of course, he could have been put in somewhere on the flood and been carried upstream and then down again. But from the look of his clothes it wouldn’t seem that he’d been jostled about much by the tide. If the doctor’s estimate of the time of death is anywhere near right I doubt if he was put in before the turn of the tide.’
‘How do you reckon he fetched up where he did?’
The two rivermen considered. ‘The ebb runs at about two knots at half-tide,’ the Inspector said. ‘Wind? Last night was a light easterly – might have checked the ebb a fraction, but not enough to matter. Of course, two knots is not a constant speed for a whole tide – you’ve got to allow for periods of more or less slack water. Then there’s the current in the river itself. At this time of year not much, it’s been a dryish summer, and there’s not a lot of water coming down. Say half a knot – and that’s probably an overestimate. If you say that a freely floating body – and the weights would help a bit here, because they’d keep it under water and out of any wind – moves down on the ebb at an average of a bit under two knots, you’d not be far wrong. But there’s a lot of things could upset it – eddies from the piers of bridges, local counter-currents near one or other bank, all sorts of things. I reckon it must have been a bridge eddy that put him ashore.’
‘Where would he have to start from?’
‘Lord, that depends on when he started! If he was chucked in from Blackfriars Bridge, for instance, he’d have fetched up where he did in about half an hour.’
‘How long do you think it would take whoever killed him to go through his pockets and cut out the clothes labels?’ asked Sergeant Burgess. ‘No, that’s not a silly question. I’m trying to work back.’
‘Not long,’ said Redpath. ‘It would depend on nervous strain or other excitement, of course, but from the look of things this strikes me as a fairly cool job. Twenty minutes, say – half an hour at the outside.’
‘A body’s not a nice thing to have lying around. Could we assume that he was put in the river within an hour of being killed?’
‘It seems a reasonable assumption.’
‘Then if the doctor’s right, and he was killed around 11 p.m., he’d have gone in about midnight.’
‘Good enough for a working theory, anyway.’
‘The ebb had started then. He’d have had, say, five and a half hours of it. That’s five and a half hours at a bit under two knots – say ten miles in round figures. That means he could have started somewhere around Kew or Brentford.’
Redpath was impressed. ‘There are places up there where he could have been put in all right without attracting too much attention.’
‘Don’t forget that high water at Kew is about an hour later than at London Bridge,’ the River Inspector said. ‘If he went in at Kew at midnight, he wouldn’t have started downstream for an hour or so.’
‘No more he would. Perhaps we should make it nearer. Chiswick, perhaps, or even Hammersmith. But the arithmetic’s all pretty chancy.’
‘It seems likely to have been well up-river, anyway. I’ll have inquiries made from Hammersmith upwards. Someone may have noticed something. A body needs at least two people to carry it any distance from a car, and it’s not easily disguised. Of course, they could say he was drunk, or something. But if anyone saw it, they’ll remember.’
‘Wait a bit – how do you reckon he was put in?’ the River Inspector asked. ‘He couldn’t have been put in from either bank, because the body was weighted, and it would have sunk in shallow water. He must have gone in somewhere near midstream. It’s hard to drop anything as big as a body from a bridge without being noticed – even at midnight. I don’t believe it. I think he must have been put in from a boat.’
To both Redpath and Burgess this seemed incontestable.
*
Looking for a suspicious boat was clearly a job for the River Police, and they did it thoroughly. But what made any one boat more suspicious than another? Any sort of boat could have been used to ferry a body to midstream and to put it gently over the side in darkness. There are hundreds of places for mooring boats on the Thames – and this boat may have needed only a temporary mooring. The police could not know whether they were looking for a skiff, a punt, or a cabin cruiser. And they could not rule out the bigger commercial craft, tugs, lighters, oil tankers, and general cargo coasters, pursuing their lawful occasions on the Thames. Any one of them might have been used for an unlawful occasion, but, if so, the most diligent inquiries failed to bring it to light.
Inspector Redpath and the ordinary police made hundreds of inquiries on land, but could learn nothing to indicate who the dead man was, or how or where he met his death. Analysis of the water in his clothes showed that it was similar to water in the tidal Thames, which bore out the presumption that he had been put in the river below Teddington, but otherwise did not help. His description was circulated to all police forces throughout Britain, and a number of anxious relatives visited the mortuary to see if they could recognise him as a missing husband, brother or son, but no one did. The Ministry of Defence said that Belgian ammunition of that particular batch had never been supplied to the British Army, and how it had come into Britain was unknown. The police began to believe that the dead man must have been a foreigner, killed on some ship visiting London’s river, his body disposed of in the darkness, leaving the ship to sail away. It was not a satisfactory solution of what came to be called the Southwark Bridge Mystery, but no one could think of a better one.
II
THE BANKER’S TALE
AFTER THE STRANGE events which took me to the West African desert,* I needed a spell at sea. I could not get away at once because of all the clearing up there was to do, but at last the files on that unhappy case could be put away, and I was planning a fortnight’s cruise in my ancient Yorkshire coble Joanna, now moored on the Crouch. I hadn’t deserted my first love, the Salcombe yawl Lisa, but she lived at my home in South Devon, and now that I was officially attached to Sir Edmund Pusey’s Police Liaison Department at the Home Office I had to live in London, and the Crouch was much more accessible. There were times when Joanna’s somewhat footslogging performance made me long for the thoroughbred feel of Lisa, but I had an affection for Joanna† and she had one advantage over Lisa – her small cuddy where I could cook and sleep, and be independent of the land. I didn’t know the east coast well, and having to live in London at least gave me a chance to explore its fascinating creeks and swatchways, and those turbulent, shallow waters of the North Sea that have nurtured some of the finest of English seamen. I was poring over a chart in my room, working out a passage from Foulness Island to Aldeburgh, in Suffolk, when my door half opened and Sir Edmund looked in.
‘Can you spare a moment, Peter?’ he asked.
‘If you really mean that, of course. But I’m starting a fortnight’s leave tomorrow,’ I replied cautiously.
‘I know. That’s what I want to talk to you about. Come along to my room.’ Before I could think of a suitable verbal means of running for cover, he had gone. With a sinking heart I followed him.
‘Sit down, Peter,’ he said. ‘There’s something I’d like you to do for me.’ I did sit down, but said nothing, and he went on, ‘It’s your own fault entirely. If you hadn’t got such a peculiar aptitude for dealing with improbable situations you could go off and be seasick whenever you want. As things are, I’d like you to postpone your leave for a bit.’
‘I am seldom seasick,’ I said coldly. ‘And I’m not particularly good at dealing with improbable situations. The only situation in which I am interested at the moment is the wholly ordinary one of sitting at Joanna’s tiller. You yourself were good enough to say that I had earned some leave, and I want to take it.’
‘I know all that, and I know I’m asking you to postpone something that means a lot to you. But I also know that you won’t let me down.’ He put on one of his most winning smiles. ‘I’ve asked Sir Geoffrey Gillington to come along in half an hour.’
‘And who is Sir Geoffrey Gillington?’
‘Sir Geoffrey is chairman of the London Metropolitan Bank, the biggest of the clearing banks.’
‘Useful if you need an overdraft, I suppose,’ I said bitterly.
‘Well, you never know. But he has a rather curious story which the Commissioner at New Scotland Yard has asked us to look into. Sir Geoffrey met the Commissioner at a Lord Mayor’s Banquet, and when he became worried he naturally went to him. But – if there’s anything in it – it’s a complicated matter, involving the bank, a shipping company, the Ministry of Defence and, perhaps, the Foreign Office – precisely the sort of thing our Police Liaison Department was set up to deal with. So the Commissioner asked me to see him. As ships are in your line, naturally I want you to see him, too.’
‘Small boats are in my line,’ I corrected him. ‘If it’s shipping company finance, you’ve got Paul Seddon. He was Scotland Yard’s financial wizard before he got into your clutches, and he’s damned good at anything like that. Much better than I am.’
‘Maybe we shall need him. But you’ve worked a lot with Paul Seddon, and you get on with him very well. Come off it, Peter – you’re just quibbling. The point is, are you with us?’
‘If you put it like that, you don’t leave me much choice.’
‘Poor old Peter! It’s horrid to give up a leave that you really have earned, and I’m sorry to have to ask you. But if I didn’t know I could count on you, I suppose you wouldn’t be here.’
‘I don’t need flattery. I was brought up to obey orders. What’s this banker’s story?’
‘He’ll tell it himself in a few minutes. Ask Rosemary to make us a pot of tea.’
*
In my tycoon days, before the collapse of my second career, I’d had a fair amount to do with bankers, and my collective memory of them was of thin, precise men, in dark suits and wearing rimless glasses. Sir Geoffrey Gillington wasn’t in the least like that. He looked more like a farmer as indeed he was, farming ten thousand acres in Lincolnshire as a highly profitable hobby. He wore no glasses at all, and had alert, and rather kindly eyes. Sir Edmund introduced me. ‘Colonel Blair,’ he said. ‘A member of my department whom I have asked to see if he can help you.’
The banker shook my hand politely, but seemed puzzled. ‘Forgive me,’ he said to Sir Edmund, ‘but when I went to the Commissioner, whom I know slightly, I understood that the police would be good enough to look into our problem. I’m not quite sure why I have been summoned to the Home Office.’
Sir Edmund smiled. ‘I can understand your being puzzled – we are, perhaps, a somewhat puzzling department, and we are not, thank God, much publicised. In your bank, Sir Geoffrey, you will employ a variety of specialists, and you will have general managers to coordinate their work. An organisation as big as the police has to turn to scores of different agencies. My department has two functions. We act as a kind of general staff in the war against crime, and we coordinate, if we don’t exactly control, the activities of all police forces in the country, particularly when they involve liaison with other services or government departments. The Commissioner discussed with me the statement you made to him, and we both feel that it may require action on a number of different fronts, and that it would, therefore, be helpful if our Police Liaison Group handled matters from the start. I hope I’ve made things a little clearer.’
‘I’m sorry to have asked for an explanation – you will understand that bankers are trained to be cautious. You’ve made things admirably clear, and I’m the more grateful to the Commissioner for taking what may turn out to be my unfounded worries so seriously. Would you like me to repeat my story now?’
‘I shall be glad if you will. Colonel Blair knows nothing of it yet, and it would be better, I think, for him to hear it at first-hand from you.’
The banker sat down, and accepted a cup of tea. ‘To make sense of it all, I must go back a bit in history,’ he said. ‘The London Metropolitan, as you probably know, was the outcome of an amalgamation between two other banks about ten years ago – the London Bank and the City and Metropolitan. I was an old London man myself, and at one time I was manager of the branch in Upper Thames Street – that’s going back to just after the war. It was a fairly general branch, holding accounts for various businesses, and a number of professional firms – solicitors, architects and accountants. One of my customers was a smallish, but well run, shipping company – T and T Coastal and Continental Shipping. It was – is, I should say – an old concern, going back to the days of coastal ketches and collier brigs, and was founded by the great-grandfather of the present chairman to bring coal from the Tyne to London. The T and T of its title stands for Tyne and Thames. Like many other coastal shipping companies it met hard times after the First World War, when motor lorries began taking the general cargoes that used to go by sea to all the little ports. It was the motor lorry rather than the train that really hit coastal trading, for the hinterland of many of the smaller ports is ill-served by main lines, and until the coming of the lorry it was still economic to send a lot of things by sea.
‘T and T, however, was well managed by the Stavanger family, generation after generation of mariners who really understood the shipping business. It was the tradition in the family for sons to serve their time at sea, and then to command the company’s ships. When the time came, one or other of the sons would come ashore to run the shipping offices. James Stavanger, the father of the present chairman, Andrew Stavanger, ran the business between the wars. He was careful, shrewd, and thoroughly able, and made up for the collapse of the older coastal trades by sending his ships farther afield. He was one of the first to see that the tomato was ceasing to be a luxury and was becoming an established part of the British diet, and he developed an important trade in carrying tomatoes from the Mediterranean. He turned also to the Baltic for timber and wood-pulp, and to the Netherlands for dairy produce. All this needed rather bigger ships, and he committed the family heavily – the family rather than the company, for it was still a family concern – to a programme of replacement and new building.
‘When the war came he had a fleet of eleven ships, most of them modern carriers of eight hundred to one thousand tons. Being mostly new, they were exceedingly useful to the Navy, serving as minesweepers and coastal patrol vessels. They had a splendid war record, but a sad number of casualties.
‘James Stavanger died in the last year of the war. He had two sons, both serving as reserve officers in the Royal Navy. One lost his life on duty with an Arctic convoy, the other – Andrew – took over the running of the business as soon as he was demobilised. He had a difficult time, having largely to rebuild the fleet in a period when every shipyard had an order book as long as your arm. But he had inherited his father’s ability, and he was just getting things straight again when he was badly hit by a prolonged series of dock strikes that tied up his ships and prevented them from earning anything. It was a Stavanger tradition to finance their ships by careful management and frugal living for themselves, and throughout the difficult years between the wars, the firm had never had an overdraft. Andrew Stavanger was compelled to turn to the bank for help after the dock strikes, and it was then that I got to know him. Of course we were able to help him – the Stavangers were among our oldest customers, and their T and T shipping line had a well-earned reputation. For Andrew Stavanger himself I developed a great respect. There were no problems about his overdraft. Within five years he had paid back every penny, and by 1960 his ships were making a good deal of money.
‘I next had personal dealings with him some four years ago, in very different circumstances. I was on the board of the bank then, and he came to me for advice about a takeover bid for his company. It was a curious affair – the takeover offer was not from another shipping company, but from the Ingard property group, a network of companies making speculative deals in land, controlled by the financier Desmond Ingard. I could see no point in the takeover either for Andrew Stavanger personally, or for the T and T company. By that time the shipping company had accumulated substantial reserves of cash, and as the offer was in Ingard shares I could understand the attraction of the deal to Desmond Ingard. I advised Andrew Stavanger to have nothing to do with it – as he was the controlling shareholder in the shipping company, all he had to do was to say no. But he didn’t. He accepted the offer and the deal went through, the T and T line becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ingard group. Andrew Stavanger stayed on as managing director of the shipping company, with a seat on the board of the group.
‘I don’t know why he acted as he did. Partly, perhaps, because he has no son. His only brother, the one who went down in the Arctic, died unmarried. His own wife is dead. He has one daughter, married to a well-known politician – Vivian Carolan, who is Minister of Fine Arts in the present government. Possibly he felt that for her to inherit control of a shipping company might be an embarrassment to her husband in his political career. But, as I say, I don’t know.
‘I now come to more recent events. I am, I fear, betraying the confidence which a banker ought to respect for his customers, but I have thought deeply about it and decided that I must. The Ingard group is in serious financial trouble, and a fortnight ago presented a cheque for £300,000 which it had neither funds nor a sufficient overdraft to meet – it had already exceeded the limit of the facilities which the bank was prepared to allow. The manager of the branch concerned could not possibly pay the cheque, but, since the Ingard group has many small investors and its collapse would have wide repercussions, he at once referred it to the board.
‘Many property groups have recently been in difficulties, and it is generally known in the City that the Ingard group has not been doing well. The full extent of its difficulties is not generally known. Partly they derive from the economic uncertainties that have upset land values, partly from a disastrous speculation in buying a large area of land in the Thames marshes from the Ministry of Defence. This was land that had been used by the army for infantry training but which, for various reasons, the Ministry decided to give up. Had the plans for a third London airport in the Thames estuary gone ahead, the land could doubtless have been developed at considerable profit. As things are, it’s more or less useless. Planning permission for a big housing development has been refused, and the group is in deep trouble over it. I’m not sure if it has fully paid the Ministry for the land. I suspect not, and, if so, it has further heavy obligations to meet. On top of the general fall in the value of property pledged for various loans, and used to inflate share values, the Thames estuary land deal has put the group on the rocks.
