Читать книгу The Harry Palmer Quartet - Len Deighton - Страница 22

[Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) Don’t be surprised if trips to other people’s houses bring whispers of insincerity for you will also discover a new friendship.]

‘We’ve had a call from Shoreditch Police Station, sir. Frightfully funny business really.’ All Keightley’s ‘r’s were pronounced like a ‘w’. ‘They have a fellow there. Traffic accident. His car scraped a traffic signal I believe.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘So?’

‘Well sir, the constable asked him for his licence and so on …’

‘Keightley, get to the point please.’

‘Well, sir, this johnny in the car. We’ve no record here at the CRO, not a white card that is, but there is a green card for him. You know it’s for suspected persons without a criminal record.’

‘Yes, I know that. Tell me, how did you locate his card? Did he give his name?’

‘No, sir. That’s just it. You see, this johnny is dressed up in a Metropolitan Police, Chief Inspector’s uniform. Luckily the constable had worked in CRO for a year, recognized him and remembered the face. He thought we had a white card but we only have a green one. It’s endorsed to your department, with one of those star marks for top priority. So I phoned you. What we want to know, sir, is, shall we tell Shoreditch that there is a green card? There may be an Interpol card of course. Do you want him? That’s what I want to know, sir.’

‘Listen, Keightley. Tell Shoreditch I want this man held. In fact I want him stripped. I want them to be most careful. Watch for cyanide pills. This could be very important. Tell the chief there that I’m holding him personally responsible for the prisoner’s safety. I want him under lock and key from the minute you finish talking to them, and he’s to be kept under constant observation. Oh, yes, and make sure the constable that brought him in is available – they should make that copper a sergeant on the spot. Pulling in an inspector, indeed: some nerve; and tell them I’m leaving right away. I’ll be there before 7.30.’

‘Yes, sir, right away, sir.’

‘Oh, and Keightley.’

‘Sir?’

‘You did right to tell me immediately, whatever the outcome.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

I buzzed my controller on the big exchange and they had a black Jaguar at the ready. I locked the IBM and the recorder, I pressed the white button that set the phone to automatic recording. Murray still hadn’t finished his drink and asked me if he could come for the ride. I don’t have fixed rules about that sort of thing so I said OK. Carswell decided to call it a day. We walked across to Tottenham Court Road and within an instant of reaching the corner the car swept us in. The driver was one of the civilians the police let us have just after the war so he needed no guidance to Shoreditch Police Station. We moved across into the New Oxford Street traffic and up Theobalds Road. I let the driver use the bell and he pulled over to the offside of Clerkenwell Road and shot the speedometer up to seventy.

We were half-way across City Road when a yellow newspaper van coming north from Moorgate realized that we weren’t stopping either. The van wheels locked as the driver hit the brake pedal. Our driver pushed the accelerator even harder, which gave the van an inch or so of clearance as it slid across behind us with white hot brakes and the driver’s face to match. The last thing I wanted at this stage was that sort of complication.

‘Careful,’ I said, in what I considered masterful restraint.

‘That’s all right, sir,’ said the driver, mistaking vexation for nervousness. ‘They’ve got rubber mudguards on those paper vans.’

I realized why the police had let us have him.

It had really begun to rain in earnest now and the streets were a kaleidoscope of reflected taillights and neon. As we drew up in front of the Police Station three policemen were standing in the doorway. I’m glad they weren’t fooling about as far as security was concerned. The driver left the car and came into the station with us. He probably thought he’d see someone he knew. Murray and I were greeted by the sergeant that Keightley had spoken to.

‘All absolutely under control, sir,’ he said proudly. ‘No sooner said than done. Your other two people are parking their car. They needn’t have troubled …’

‘Other two people?’ I said. A cold colicky pain kneaded my stomach. I knew that I needn’t have troubled either. When we got to him he was naked, horizontal and very dead. I turned the body over. He was a strong, good-looking man of about thirty-five. He looked older close to than when I’d seen him before. We could cross Housemartin off our files. Just as Jay’s people were crossing him off theirs right now. It was 7.33. His uniform gave clues – a packet of cigarettes, some money – £3 15s 0d, a handkerchief. I sent immediately for the police constable who had pulled him in. I asked him everything that had happened.

PC Viney came in with a half-written report and a small stub of pencil. He was almost bald, a thick-set man, perhaps an ex-army athlete, a little towards the plump side, he even now would make a formidable opponent. His thin hair, white at the temples, framed his very small ears set well back; a large nose was red from the night air; and his lower jaw was carried well forward in the way that guardsmen and policemen cope with chin straps that don’t fit under the jaw. Under his open tunic he wore a badly knitted red pullover with blue braces over the top. His attitude was relaxed and shrewd, as could be expected from someone who had pulled in a man dressed as an inspector.

The sergeant behind me was leaning in the cell door saying, ‘In thirty-five years of service …’ loud enough for me to hear, and worrying himself sick about his pension.

I turned back to the constable. He told me that he had suspected Housemartin’s demeanour right from first sight, but would never have come to close enough quarters to recognize him if he hadn’t hit the traffic light. Did he think that the man had come from any of the nearby houses? He thought he might have been pulling out into traffic.

‘Now don’t worry about law court stuff, constable,’ I told him. ‘I’d sooner you told me something that’s a flimsy guess than hesitate because we can’t prove it. Now just let’s suppose that this man did pull away from the kerb and that he had come from one of the houses in that street. Think carefully of that row of houses. Do you know it well?’

‘Yes, sir, fairly well. They all have their peculiarities. Quite a few of the houses have front rooms where the curtains are never pulled back or changed, but that’s the English front room, isn’t it, sir?’

‘The sort of house I’d be interested in is one where new tenants have moved in during the last six months. A house where new people have been seen going in and out. People not of the neighbourhood, that is. Is there a house that is particularly secluded? It would have a garage and the driver might be able to enter the house direct from the garage.’

Viney said, ‘All the houses there stand back from the street, but one in particular is secluded because the owner has bought the undeveloped site on each side of the house. Of course, the houses either side of it are also secluded, but only on one side. Number 40 is one side, that’s all flats – young married couples mostly. Mrs Grant owns that. On the other side 44 is a very low building; the husband there is a waiter in the West End. I see him about two to two-thirty on the night beat. I know that Mr Edwards at the Car Mart made an offer for one of the sites. We kept pinching him for obstruction. He left his cars in the road. After we’d had him every day nearly for about a week, he came up to see the sergeant. I think really he told us about buying the site to show he was trying. But anyway, they wouldn’t sell. When I think of it, that’s the only house that I can’t remember any of the occupiers from. They had a lot of building done. Conversion into flats I imagine. About February. But there are no “to let” signs up. Not that you need ’em, word of mouth is enough.’

‘You’ve hit it, constable. I’ll buy your big secluded house with alterations.’

Keightley had phoned up the station and got them all in a rare state when he heard what had happened. Murray had heard Keightley’s high-pitched little voice saying, ‘Murder? Murder? Murder in a police station?’ Coming as Keightley’s voice did from CRO it worried them far more than anything I might say.

I had them do all the unit checks for fingerprints and Identikit descriptions of the two men – but knowing Jay’s set-up it was unlikely they would have a record of any sort, or leave prints. The constable recognizing Housemartin from a photo he’d seen once at CRO¹ was the sort of fluke that happens only very rarely. I turned to PC Viney who had brought me a cup of tea from the canteen. He stood, his uniform jacket undone, waiting and appraising my next action. I said to him, ‘Show me on the map, would you? And then I will want to use a phone in private – a scrambled line if possible.’

The information room at Scotland Yard came through in seconds. ‘Shoreditch Police Station. I want to speak with an officer of 3H Security Clearance or above; my authority is WOOC(P).’

‘Hold the line, sir.’

The unshaded light made bright reflections in the shiny-cream paintwork. Faintly through the closed door I could hear the canteen radio singing ‘There’s a Small Hotel’. My tea sat on the worn desk and I fiddled nervously with an old shell case made into a pen-and-ink stand. Finally the phone made clicking sounds and the information room came back on the line.

‘Chief Inspector Banbury, CID here.’

Luckily I knew ‘Cuff-links’ Banbury from the old days. It saved a lot of preliminary checking with code words. Or rather it would have done, except that ‘Cuff-links’ insisted on going through it all. I wanted thirty officers, at least five of them armed, and four vehicles without police identification.

‘All the plain-finish vehicles are in the Richmond garage,’ Cuff-links said.

‘Then borrow private cars from your coppers. Try West End Central, they’ve got big cars there.’ My sarcasm was lost on Cuff-links; he just carried on being smooth and efficient. ‘I want one car to have radio link. I shall be briefing them en route. Include a couple of hook ladders and a jemmy. Tell your press office that I want “complete blackout”, and put someone on the radio link that won’t shoot his mouth. That’s all, chief. Phone me back when they are on the road – say thirty minutes.’

‘No, about an hour.’

‘No good, chief, this is a 3H Security. If you can’t do better than that I’ll get authority to use my soldiers.’

‘Well, I’ll try for forty minutes.’

‘Thanks, chief. See you.’ It was 7.58.

I went upstairs. Murray was leaning over a big scrubbed table with the elderly constable, a sergeant and an inspector with a neatly trimmed moustache. I asked the sergeant who the inspector was. It didn’t make any of them madly happy, but ‘twice bitten could get to be a habit’. Murray had worked out a sensible way of hitting 42 Acacia Drive. He had dug out a photo of the street and had drawn a diagram showing heights of garden walls and deploying twenty-five men. Murray had also implied by unknown subtle means that his rank was considerably higher than sergeant. The inspector was deferring to his suggestions and the police sergeant was saying, ‘Yes sir, good sir, very good, sir.’ I told the policemen that they could come along if they wished, but explained that since I had put ‘complete blackout’ on the operation, any leakage would be actionable under the Official Secrets Act.

Murray used a propelling pencil with changeable coloured leads to mark in the extra five men; then we stood around drinking another cup of sweet tea. By now the canteen was organized for the top brass. I had a swallow-pattern cup with a saucer to match and a spoon. Murray decided that this was a good time to ask about his living-out allowance. It was nearly three months behind. I said I’d do what I could.

At 8.21, after a knock at the door, a constable said a military police vehicle had just driven into the courtyard, the driver asking for ‘Mr’ Murray. Murray said he thought a Champ vehicle with radio equipment ‘might be useful’. He’d asked for it to drive in instead of parking conspicuously. Murray and I went downstairs to see if the radio could get the Scotland Yard wavelength. He told me that by having a Provost vehicle we automatically got a revolver and ammunition and what he described as ‘other useful things’. Murray was proving so unlike what I imagined that I decided to recheck his security clearance the next day.

¹ Criminal Records Office.