Death in the City, page 7
‘Actually, no. But that can wait.’
‘Peter, you’re incorrigible. You’re bad enough about lunch, but to miss breakfast is an affront to civilisation. You can talk while you eat. Go and have your bath, and there’ll be some breakfast ready for you when you come out.’
I’d stayed with the Puseys several times, and knew my way about the flat. That bath was one of the more memorable experiences of my life. I watched water the colour of the Thames at low tide drain away while I dried myself, and felt the horror of last night drain away with it.
In spite of his earlier suggestion that I should talk as I ate, Sir Edmund refused to listen to me until I’d put away a plate of his favourite devilled kidneys. Then he poured me a cup of coffee, poured another for himself, and sat back. ‘Now, Peter, what is it?’ he said.
Lady Pusey excused herself, saying that she wanted to get ready for church. ‘As for you, Ted,’ she said to her husband, ‘I suppose you’ll have to have a dispensation.’
‘Laborare est orare,’ he observed sententiously.
*
I gave him an account of my adventures on Winter Marsh.
‘It’s an extraordinary story,’ he said. ‘Winter Marsh is no longer a restricted area. It hasn’t been for three years.’
‘Of course it doesn’t make sense. Even if it was restricted, an army guard doesn’t shoot visitors on sight. I’d have been taken to a guardroom and asked to explain myself.’
‘Yet you say the men who turned you away were wearing army uniform?’
‘They were wearing army clothes – but you can buy them at any army surplus stores.’
‘It’s not a bad idea if you want to keep out visitors. Winter Marsh has been an army training ground since the First World War. To anyone who didn’t know that the place had been given up, soldiers would look as natural there as seagulls. It’s a very serious matter. What on earth are they trying to hide?’
‘Well, I didn’t get into the old camp, so I don’t know. But if they’re ready to murder a chance visitor, it must be something pretty important.’
‘What do you want us to do? We can get a search warrant easily enough.’
I’d been thinking about this all the way back to London. ‘They’ve had all night, and there’s been plenty of time to get anything really incriminating out of the way. That’s one thing. Another is, who are they? I heard one of them talk about “the boss”. We don’t know who he is, and almost certainly he doesn’t live there. We might run in the chaps I saw, and perhaps a few others, if they maintain a twenty-four hour guard on the place. But if they won’t talk – or perhaps don’t even know precisely what goes on – we’ve shown our hand, and got no tricks. As things are they think I’m dead. They’ve no reason to be particularly scared. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t carry on with whatever it is they’re doing. What we’ve got to do is to find out.’
‘What about your car that they couldn’t find? They’re bound to be suspicious about that.’
‘I was wondering if it could, perhaps, be stolen. If Southend police could run in some young man who picked up the car on the Foulness road yesterday afternoon. They could run him in after a police chase, or something, which would get it into the papers, and on the radio news tomorrow morning.’
‘It still leaves you unexplained.’
‘I’m dead. And it could turn out that the car I left on the Foulness road was stolen from a car park in Colchester or somewhere. They haven’t seen the car, remember. Make it a nice Jaguar. Then I’m the sort of person who goes round picking up Jaguars that don’t belong to him. I don’t want to come forward, anyway. And since I’m dead, no one is going to be able to find me.’
Sir Edmund considered this for a bit. Then he said, ‘As I think I’ve mentioned to you before, Peter, it’s a good thing you’re on our side of the law. You have an oblique mind – and sometimes it is a very useful mind. I’ll talk to Seddon – and then you can go and talk to him, and give him all the details he’ll need to make your crime look authentic. I’ll have a word with the Chief Constable as well. And we have ways of making sure that the escapade of that silly young man at Southend gets widely reported. Meanwhile, of course, we must keep an eye on Winter Marsh.’
‘That’s easier said than done. There’s no cover, and – as happened to me – any stranger sticks out like a sore thumb. I’ve been thinking about this, too. And I’ve been wondering if something could go wrong with the telephone system of Foulness.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘It doesn’t actually have to go wrong. And people do live in other parts of the area, and they need telephones – from what I’ve seen of the place they’ll be about the main link with the outside world. But the road is a public road, and I don’t see why men with a nice yellow telephone van shouldn’t dig a hole in it – they’re always digging holes in roads, to mend faults, or put in new lines, or something. And you know these telephone-holes – when they’ve dug a good hole they put a sort of little canvas tent on top, so that they can work in comfort underneath. Now if you choose the right site for your hole on that road, you have a good view through field glasses of the camp – and no one’s going to notice a small slit in the canvas cover of a telephone-hole. You can put red lamps round it at night, and have the place manned all the time.’
‘It had better be new lines, I think, Peter – work that is liable to take some time. And when one hole has been there for a couple of days, they can dig another if necessary. Another job for Seddon and the Yard – and it will need a bit of cooperation from the GPO. That can be arranged without much difficulty. We’ll have a telephone van and a small team of good CID men there in the morning. Now we shall have to use that telephone system that you seem so anxious to sabotage.’
‘Improve,’ I corrected.
Seddon offered me lunch at his home. I didn’t try to go into details on the phone, but said that we were going to need some police observation. He arranged to have Detective Inspector Balfour at his house to meet me. I told him the maps we should need, and he promised to have all the necessary Ordnance map sheets ready.
IV
AT INGARD HOUSE
ON THE EIGHT o’clock radio news that Monday morning there was a substantial piece about an exciting police chase in Essex – understandably, on a rather lonely road. At times the police car had had to go at over 100 mph. The other car was ultimately forced to stop, and a young man ran off into a field. He was pursued and caught, and would appear at Southend Magistrates’ Court charged with taking and driving away a Jaguar car without the owner’s consent from the Foulness road on Saturday afternoon. It was understood that the car was one reported to have been stolen some days earlier from a car park in Colchester. Later Seddon telephoned to tell me that a young man – actually a volunteer from the Metropolitan police – had duly appeared at Southend, and had been remanded for a week. The Essex police had opposed bail, and he had been remanded in custody. He did not, however, have to stay in prison for long, for, without any publicity, a judge in chambers granted bail, and he slipped off home. Seddon also told me that a team of telephone engineers had already started work to improve the service to Foulness. There was a real engineer among them, and my suggestion about telephone work had paid a bonus, for he had installed a phone in the hole, and the watchers now had a direct link with New Scotland Yard.
*
I had nothing much to do before reporting to the banker at four o’clock. I used the time by moving from the Temple to Peel Square – not a formidable job, for it required only a suitcase and a taxi. I thought I’d try the service lunch, and had an omelette and a half bottle of a creditable claret sent up to my room.
Visitors to Sir Geoffrey Gillington were well looked after. I reported promptly, and his secretary appeared almost at once to conduct me to the presence. The banker sat at an enormous desk surrounded by acres of carpet, in a room hung with what looked like Dutch Old Masters, though I suppose they may have been reproductions.
There was another man with Sir Geoffrey, and he introduced him as Mr James Henniker, of Pooley, Handyside and Henniker, the accountants. ‘Mr Henniker is now the senior partner,’ he said. ‘With Sir Edmund Pusey’s agreement I have taken him into our confidence. You, Mr Mottram, are one of our Assistant General Managers, concerned with internal auditing. I wrote to Mr Desmond Ingard as we arranged, and I met him and another member of his board this morning. In the circumstances they could hardly refuse our request for a special audit – indeed, they appeared to welcome it, saying that although they were going through a difficult time they had nothing to hide, and were confident that the bank would wish to continue its support.’
‘I had a long talk with Sir Geoffrey before you came,’ said Mr Henniker. ‘From what he tells me there is abundant reason for a special audit, and my own work will be perfectly genuine. I shall wish to see records of all dealings since the last formal audit, to ascertain the group’s cash position and to form an opinion of its prospects of meeting its debt to the bank within reasonable time. I shall have with me two clerks, and, of course, yourself. Sir Geoffrey has arranged for us to be provided with two rooms in the Ingard offices – and I suggest that I and my clerks occupy one room, and you the other. I shall not tell my clerks that there is anything out of the ordinary about this audit, and they will accept you quite naturally as the special representative of the bank. From time to time I shall send one or other of them to you with documents to examine, and it would be helpful, I think, if you looked in periodically to study our work in progress.’
‘I have explained to Mr Ingard that you may need to discuss various matters with departmental heads in the group,’ Sir Geoffrey added. ‘That will give you, I hope, all the freedom of action you need.’
‘You have both done admirably,’ I said. ‘For reasons which I won’t go into now, I think we may be specially interested in all matters relating to the Ingard group’s involvement with Winter Marsh – the ex-Ministry of Defence land which you mentioned, Sir Geoffrey, the other day. Perhaps Mr Henniker would bear that particularly in mind.’
‘I shall do that in any case,’ Mr Henniker said. ‘From what I know of the previous accounts the Winter Marsh investment – or error of judgment – is one of the main causes of the group’s present financial difficulties.’
Sir Geoffrey rang through to his secretary to ask her to bring in tea, and we chatted over tea for a few minutes. I found myself liking Henniker – he was a few years older than I am, and had served in the war as an AA gunner. He had a dryness of manner which concealed a pleasant sense of humour, and he would be, I thought, exceptionally shrewd. ‘Mr Ingard is expecting us at nine thirty in the morning,’ he said as we got up to go. ‘I suggest that we meet here at nine and go along to Ingard House together.’
‘That seems fine,’ I said.
*
We reported to the reception desk at Ingard House and the girl there rang through to Mr Ingard. There were four of us in our party – Henniker and I, a young man introduced to me as Tom Spalding, and a girl of about twenty-two – also an articled clerk – called Diana Robinson. Ingard kept us waiting for nearly ten minutes – pompous ass, I thought. Then his instructions came through. Henniker and I were to be taken up to Mr Ingard’s room, Spalding and Miss Robinson were to go to the offices allotted to us on the second floor. A girl appeared to take Henniker and me in tow. Spalding and Miss Robinson were sent to the lift, told to get out at the second floor, turn right, and go to the rooms numbered 207 and 208.
We did not go up in the same lift, but were taken to another one, apparently for the use of directors only. The protocol at Ingard House was far more elaborate than at the head office of the bank.
Sir Geoffrey Gillington’s office had suggested dignified good taste. Ingard’s room was lavish. There was a carpet into which you seemed to sink several inches, an ornate desk in the style of the French Empire, a huge couch, upholstered in grey and scarlet, and a number of big soft armchairs in the same pattern. A cocktail bar, with two or three bar stools in front of it, took up the whole of one corner. Ingard was affability itself. ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘but I had an important telephone call from Geneva – a highly profitable call, I might add.’ He laughed. ‘In the circumstances I felt that you would prefer me to make some money.’
He was a big man, probably not yet fifty, though going a little to seed. He was not actually wearing morning dress, but gave the impression that he was, with impeccably creased trousers, a jacket cut rather long, and a dark red carnation in his buttonhole. His hair was almost black, without a trace of grey, and he had one of those smooth, delicately bluish chins, which suggest the use of expensive after-shave preparations on a virile male skin.
‘Mr Henniker, of course, everyone in the City knows. And I believe we met once at a Stock Exchange luncheon.’ He bowed. ‘Mr – er – Mottram, is it?’ He glanced at a piece of paper. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know. Are you one of those horrid men who bounce cheques?’ He laughed at his own pleasantry.
‘Not really,’ I said, ‘though doubtless it could happen on my recommendation.’
Henniker came to my rescue. ‘Mr Mottram is among the ablest of the bank’s internal auditors,’ he said. ‘It is not a job that brings him into the public eye, but, believe me, he is one of the most trusted officers of the bank.’
‘Gentlemen – please! You must forgive my little joke.’ Ingard sensed that he had struck a wrong note. ‘You will understand that this is not the happiest of occasions for me. My group has nothing to be ashamed of, but, like everybody else nowadays, we suffer from a general shortage of cash. I’ll be absolutely open with you – we do have difficulties over cash, but when you see the business we’ve got lined up . . . well, this time next year I’ll expect the bank to be standing me a slap-up lunch! Oysters, gentlemen – I’ll provide the oysters, and it’ll be the oysters that pay off the overdraft.’
‘Oysters?’ I said, puzzled.
‘Yes, oysters – going back to Roman times. You know that land I bought off the Ministry of Defence? Winter Marsh, it’s called, near Foulness. Well, I daresay you thought I’d come unstuck, when the new airport wasn’t built. Not my way, gentlemen. Those creeks on Winter Marsh are about the best oyster grounds in Europe! I’m telling you this in confidence, but you’d find out about it when you go through the books. We’re going to make so much money out of oysters that the £5 million or so you’ve got against me will look like chicken feed. That’s why I’m not frightened of your report.’
‘I don’t doubt your business ability,’ Henniker said tactfully, ‘and it may well be as you say. But you will appreciate – I think you do appreciate – that the bank is concerned about the immediate financial position.’
‘We have a responsibility to our shareholders, and to our depositors,’ I said. ‘Of course, we also feel a high degree of responsibility to our customers – that is why we are here. The bank has no wish to call in its loans, but we must satisfy our board that your present trading justifies the considerable sum involved. We shall conduct our audit as quickly, and as unobtrusively, as possible.’
‘I’ve instructed my Chief Accountant to have everything ready for you.’ Ingard was still remarkably good humoured. ‘If you have other inquiries you wish to make I’m sure that he or I can satisfy you. I have another important foreign call coming through in a few minutes, so, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll hand you over to the Chief Accountant now.’ He lifted a telephone on his desk.
‘There’s just one more thing, Mr Ingard,’ I said. ‘From my own examination of your account with us it would appear that the shipping company in your group – the T and T line – is the major provider of cash for your present business. I should like to discuss one or two things with the managing director of the shipping company.’
‘You can’t see Andrew Stavanger, because he’s away at the moment. He’s getting on, you know, and – gentlemen of your age will understand – he had a bad war, Arctic convoys and all that. Lost his only brother, too.’ He bowed his head slightly, as if in silent prayer. ‘He is, of course, a director of the group, and we feel that he is entitled to every consideration. I am afraid that he has been far from well for several months. His deputy, Oscar Lennis, has in fact been largely running the business for the past year. He will certainly be able to tell you anything you need to know. When you wish to see Lennis, will you please telephone my secretary? I’m afraid I shall be very much tied up for the rest of today. And now, if you will permit me, I’ll ask Marshall, my Chief Accountant, to look after you. Please make yourselves at home. If you would care to lunch in the directors’ dining room, just let my secretary know.’ He spoke into the telephone, and a moment later an elderly man, wearing thick glasses, came into the room. This was Marshall, the Chief Accountant. Ingard introduced us, and we went with the accountant to his own office.
*
Mr Marshall’s office was very different from Ingard’s. Far from being luxurious, it was almost poky, with dark green linoleum instead of carpeting, and the walls lined with steel filing cabinets instead of a cocktail bar. And Mr Marshall was very different from Ingard – where Ingard had been expansive, he was withdrawn, and where Ingard had been cocksure and flamboyant, he seemed almost nervous. I glanced at my watch. ‘Look,’ I said to Henniker, ‘I’d rather like to have a word with Mr Lennis before lunch. Could you carry on here while I look into the shipping side of things?’
‘That seems sensible – we don’t want merely to duplicate each other’s work,’ Henniker said.
‘Where can I find Mr Lennis?’ I asked the Chief Accountant.
‘It’s quite easy – they’re on the next floor down. You can use the lift, of course, but I think it’s really quicker to walk. I’ll ring through and tell him that you’re coming.’
‘That’s very good of you.’ And to Henniker I said, ‘Shall I collect you here?’
