The Bad Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Oh, well, that’s all right, then.’

  Hello! plunged into again.

  And, somehow, an idea in his head.

  It must have been half what he’d heard on the telly, the thought that even police high-ups were sometimes on the take. And it had been half - all right, admit it - what that bitch Anna Foxton had said just a few minutes before. Isn’t there someone you could pay to get it for you?

  Because there was someone. Or perhaps, just perhaps, there was.

  However far beyond the possibility of bribing Mac MacAllister was, perhaps Horatio Bottomley might not be as much through and through solid, grating iron. Why should he be, after all? He was probably as human as anybody else. Just because he worked under Mac, had done for years, it didn’t mean he’d got to be just the same sort of never-a-glance-anywhere-aside fellow as inhuman, impossible Mac.

  And! - hey, this was good - once that blue folder had been handed to Emslie Warnaby, the cash in the Cadbury’s Roses tin would no longer be something totally necessary. So as much as, say, a thousand quid from it could be used in advance of retirement time. If necessary.

  Would an ordinary civilian clerk like Horatio Bottomley be able to resist a thousand nicker? For doing practically nothing? No way.

  At five o’clock next evening - no time to waste. He might be wrong about the bloke. Have to think of something else then - he waylaid Horatio just as he was leaving Headquarters. The sky above, never mind June, was ominous with piled-up rain clouds.

  Just the ticket. Time he had some luck.

  ‘Hi, there. Day’s work done, eh?’

  ‘Oh, hello, Mr Stallworthy. You up here quite a lot just now.’

  Think, quick. Yes, same old excuse I used with Ma Alexander.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, been seeing the doc. Not feeling too fit, you know. Thought I’d better have a check-up.’

  Horatio Bottomley gave him a quick glance. Big brown eyes in the creased brown face under its crinkle of greyed hair, offering a cross between sympathy and shy withdrawal.

  ‘Nothing too wrong, I hope, Mr Stallworthy.’

  ‘No, no. I’m hundred percent really, just been overdoing it a bit.’

  ‘You want to take things easy, you know. Mr MacAllister, he been telling me ‘bout you. Says you’re one champion thief-taker, only—’

  An abrupt halt.

  He nearly asked him Only what?. But he realized in time what Mac was likely to have said. Only he’s on the take half the time, if I know anything. Something like that. Mac couldn’t know it for certain. But over the years that their paths had crossed he would have developed his suspicions.

  So tread carefully. Horatio, for all that trusting look of his, would have been warned against him.

  But that was no reason not to push ahead with the plan. Have something to tell pushy little Anna Foxton next time she rang.

  ‘Hey, listen, mate, I could give you a lift. You on your way home? I’m here with the motor. Might as well take advantage. Where d’you live? It looks like it’s going to pour.’

  ‘But it might not be the way you’ve got to go, Mr Stallworthy.’

  Yet, giving him a quick look, he could see on his face how tempted he was. Not having to wait and wait for a bus, to face maybe a long walk home from the stop at the far end. Most likely with it pissing down.

  ‘Oh, come on. You go somewhere into the town, don’t you? That’s where I’m going.’

  ‘Well, if it’s near the bus station … I can get a 63 from there, goes right past the end of my street. Save me a long walk from the 18 stop.’

  ‘Okay then. Motor’s just over there. Get you to the bus station in ten minutes.’

  But I won’t. I’ll find some way of making the journey last longer. Of making it last as long as it takes.

  They went over to the car and set off.

  And as they did so the rain started. Coming down in buckets.

  This should do the trick. Another piece of luck.

  If I say I hate driving in these conditions … Pull in somewhere. Then we can sit and talk. And if the rain does slacken off, with any luck by then he’ll be so hooked he won’t even notice.

  ‘Good job you did decide to come with me, mate. You’d have got bloody wet, this lot.’

  ‘That’s plenty true, Mr Stallworthy. Fact is, this old mac of mine ain’t no use at all if ever more’n just a little shower come down.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, you’re in the dry here.’

  He drove on in silence for a few moments.

  Rain hard enough to justify pulling up? Perhaps. Anyhow, the fellow won’t know any different if I say it’s too heavy to make driving safe.

  ‘You know, I’m going to have to stop. My wipers are none too good. Don’t want to drive you head-on into a traffic island.’

  ‘No, no. You pull up, Mr Stallworthy. I’m gonna get home earlier than I would, even if we have to stay where we are till the rain stop altogether.’

  ‘Right, then.’

  And a good place to pull into. Gates at the far end of Palmerston Park itself. Nice clear area in front of them.

  He came to a neat halt beside the kerb.

  Now, work into the offer good and slowly. Just like with a tricky witness. Getting them to say what they’d promised themselves they never would.

  ‘Tell me something, Horatio. How’d you come by that name of yours? Horatio Bottomley, wasn’t he some sort of dodgy financier, back in the 1920s or something? Read about him somewhere.’

  ‘That’s him, Mr Stallworthy. He was a damn famous man, you know. So back in Trinidad when I was born to Mr and Mrs Johnson Bottomley, what more right than they call me Horatio?’

  ‘So that must have been before he was caught out, the financier?’

  ‘Oh, no. My dad didn’t take no account of that. That fellow was dead and gone by the time their little boy came on the scene. But, to Dad, Horatio was just one famous man, sharing the name the way he did. So he had me called Horatio too, and he counted on me getting to be famous jus’ in the same way.’

  Jack produced a laugh.

  ‘But here you are, mate, nothing better than a no-good mac on your back and stuck in my old jalopy with the rain coming down fit to bust.’

  ‘Well, that’s sure enough true, Mr Stallworthy. But all the same something good come out of that financier man. You know what happen? When I was at school, back in Trinidad, that old master we had, whenever there was a ‘rithmetic class, he always gave me the tough ones to answer. Said, Let’s hear what the famous Horatio Bottomley make of it. An’ he cane me good an’ proper when I get it wrong. So there an’ then I decided I gonna make sure I get it right, every time. An’ that was how, when I come to England, I got the job up there with Fraud Investigation. ‘Cos never mind what else, I always gets my sums one hundred per cent correct.’

  ‘Good for you, mate. Good for you.’

  ‘Well, that’s okay. I got my job, an’ I keep it. But I ain’t famous. An’ I don’t suppose I ain’t ever gonna be.’

  Oh ho, my chance. I think.

  ‘Well, may be you’re not famous, matey. But you could be rich, you know, play your cards right.’

  ‘Rich? Me, Mr Stallworthy? I don’t see how I can get to be that, no more than I can get to be famous as that old Horatio. Not working for Abbotsport Police leastways. And I ain’t gonna leave now. Pension’s just over the horizon.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Horatio. It’s because you work for Abbotsport Police you could get rich, or a hell of a lot richer than you are now. If you want.’

  Horatio Bottomley gave a deep chuckle.

  ‘Well, ‘less they put up pay rates by one great big jump I don’t see how I ever gonna do that.’

  ‘Oh, it’d be easy enough. If you truly wanted.’

  ‘You tell me, Mr Stallworthy. I’d sure like to know.’

  Aha, beginning to bite. Just like a witness suddenly seeing how they can get out of their fix, tell the truth and still keep it looking as if they never grassed on their mate
s.

  ‘Well, there’s lots of ways, you know. With you there, right inside Fraud Investigation. F’rinstance, there must be documents sometimes right there in your hands that certain people’d be much happier weren’t in that office of yours at all.’

  ‘But, Mr Stallworthy, papers like that are there in the office, certain sure. But once Mr Mac get his hands on some document like that, those fellows their goose is right cooked. You know that. Small fraud or big, Mr Mac he just don’t let go.’

  ‘Yeah, I know old Mac all right. But, you think about it, there must often be documents, files and such, he hasn’t yet got round to seeing. Piled up there waiting for him. All you’d have to do is, maybe, take out just one document, one folder, and slip it to someone outside before Mac sets eyes on it. They’d pay you really good money, you know.’

  Now will he ask how much is really good money? If he does, I’ve got him. I’m there.

  ‘But, Mr Stallworthy, I couldn’t do nothing like that. When they bring in files from someone’s been arrested, like that Councillor Symes the other day, then all those papers have got to go to Mr Mac. That’s what they been seized for.’

  Christ, how dumb can you get?

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know that. But I’m telling you, mate, there must be papers from time to time Mac has no idea are in the office at all. Oh, he’ll know a whole mass of stuff’s been seized from someone or somewhere, but he won’t know anything about each individual piece of paper, or file, or folder. So, if the circs are right, you could jump in there, earn yourself as much in one go as you collect in your pay-packet in a month. More.’

  ‘But I couldn’t do something like that, Mr Stallworthy.’

  Losing him? Or is he just dumb?

  ‘Oh, come on, mate. It’s not anything very much. Just picking up an odd piece of paper nobody knows is there and passing it on. Or a bit of a folder, just a few letters in it. Nothing to it.’

  Horatio Bottomley shook his grey-polled head sadly.

  ‘What’s the difficulty, mate? You know, there could be a nice fat packet of notes in it for you.’

  ‘But, Mr Stallworthy, I jus’ couldn’t do it.’

  ‘Why not, mate? Why not, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘It’s the figures, Mr Stallworthy.’

  What the hell is the old fool on about now? Or does he want to know just how much? Bit more on the ball than he looks.

  ‘Figures? You want to know just how much? That it?’

  ‘Mr Stallworthy, I don’t understand. There ain’t no how much to think bout. There jus’ can’t be.’

  Jack felt invaded by sheer bewilderment.

  ‘You don’t understand, mate? I’m telling you, it’s me that doesn’t understand. I don’t understand a bloody word you’re saying.’

  ‘But it’s what I told you, Mr Stallworthy. It’s the figures.’

  ‘What figures, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Mr Stallworthy, I was telling ‘bout the way I was brought up, back in Trinidad. Where I learnt to add up an’ subtract, multiply, divide, take a percentage, highest common factor, lowest common multiple. Mr Stallworthy, that’s where I learnt it: figures is sacred. Sacred, Mr Stallworthy. I couldn’t do nothing that would make figures come out wrong. I jus’ could not do it.’

  With a savage jerk Jack turned the key in the ignition, slammed into gear and shot out into the roadway.

  It was raining harder than ever.

  Chapter Ten

  At home after dropping Horatio Bottomley at the bus station - would the old fool never stop saying thank you? - Jack did not dare go in his usual way and sit with Lily, glancing over the Argus and chatting about what she had done with her day. He could not be sure what he would come out with. The sullen rage that had erupted in him when at last it became clear that Horatio, unlike the man he had been named for, was incapable of any form of cheating, was still churning unstoppably in his mind.

  And, he had sharply reminded himself as he had pulled the car up outside, feeling the way he did he was all too likely to let it out to Lily that Ko Samui was actually there on the horizon for them both.

  It was not Emslie Warnaby’s ban on saying anything about the blue folder, even to Lily, that was still keeping him silent about the prospect of owning the Calm Seas Hotel. It was the hope stored in the back of his mind that he could somehow reject that over-whelming bribe.

  There was still the possibility - there had to be - of paying the rest of the sum due on April Cottage. After all, the banks were generally good about loans to police officers. The two of them could still, couldn’t they, settle down to a quiet life in Devon? Quiet, if not exactly luxurious.

  Not that he had as yet brought himself even to tell Lily about April Cottage. About the bet on April Fool, and how he had gone straight round to the estate agent’s and paid that deposit.

  April Fool on April the first. And, though it was now still June, all too soon it would be July. And then July the sixteenth. With no idea at all, after that infuriating talk with that stupid idiot Horatio, of how he could ever get hold of the blue folder.

  So he did no more than give Lily a wave through the window as he trotted - the rain was slackening but still coming down hard enough to give him a wetting - to the sanctuary of the garden shed. Christ, he thought, pulling the lop-sided door closed behind him, what wouldn’t I give to be able to say Up yours Emslie?

  All very well to put out your hand for a few notes from some villain who deserved, one way or another, to be given a hard time. Even to relieve someone like that of more than a few notes. But to let yourself be bought by the huge sum, or its equivalent in hotel deeds, that a man like Emslie Warnaby was flourishing…

  But how, if word of that offer ever got to Lily, could he tell Warnaby to stuff it? How could he break her heart? And word of the offer would get to Lily all right. Bloody little Anna Foxton had made that clear enough.

  He looked at his range of tools, neatly hanging from twin nails set along the shed wall.

  Anything needs doing out there? Rain pretty well stopped now. Perhaps I could plant out those lobelias. They’re about ready, and the ground’ll be lovely after the soaking it’s just had.

  Carrying the seed-tray with its rows of little lobelia plants in front of him, trowel grasped in one hand underneath it, he let his mind wander through a scenario in which, after all, he had done what Lily would want. If he did bite the bullet, take Warnaby’s offer, find himself in the end owning that bloody hotel on bloody Ko Samui … Living out there with Lil. No more troubles. Lily with everything she’d ever dreamt of. Sun shining. Life of ease. All that …

  Me there with my English rose, and her happy.

  But how in the hell am I ever going to get hold of that folder? Passport to it all?

  In sudden, push-all-aside fury, he turned the tray of sprouting lobelia plants upside down and smashed it on to their place in the bed.

  And then, barely a minute later, he began to tease each seedling safely out of the jammed-down upturned layer and put it on the earth where it was to go.

  Two days later, on the Friday, he was once again sitting in the car outside Headquarters. With no better idea in his head than to have another chat with Mac MacAllister. See if there was, anywhere at all, some tiny chink in that Scotch armour of his.

  For some time he just sat there. Surely to God there must be some approach that’d get behind that sour exterior? Had Mac never in his life ‘taken’? Not anything at all? Christ, it wasn’t doing much to accept something as a sort of payment for a favour to come, or a favour past. You couldn’t be totally rigid about everything, however bloody upright and moral you were. Not in the police, you couldn’t.

  There’d always be the time you stopped off for a quick bite to eat and the fellow behind the counter, Chinkie, Indian, hot-dog stall owner, whatever, said, ‘On me, Officer,’ when you offered to pay. Jesus, there was that time years ago in the Chinkie down at the docks when the little old man behind the counter had gone into fits of te
rror when whoever it was he’d been on patrol with that night had insisted on paying for the sweet-and-sour. Little old fellow thought it meant he was about to be pulled in. For something, for anything. No, no, please, please, done nothing wrong. No. Never. Never, never, never. All that.

  So you had to accept. And no harm in it either. They gave you something they could easily afford to; you did something for them that was no skin off your nose. Say, made sure you dropped in at the place different times every night, scare away the smash-and grabbers. Or turned a blind eye, if it was a pub, to a bit of after-hours drinking. Nothing serious. Nothing to get uptight about.

  But Mac, bloody Mac MacAllister, just the sort who does get uptight. At the least little hint of not being one hundred per cent strictly honest. And, besides, there are those opinions he’s got. About me. Never brings them out to the light of day. But they’re there all right. Hidden away. You can’t have done hundreds of interrogations without being able to tell what people are thinking, however little they let the words come out. The tiny signs. What they call body language. The not-quite-looking-you-in-the-eye. Or looking you in the eye too long and too hard. The curling fingers. The tic in the cheek they can’t stop.

  Jesus, how many villains I’ve put away in the end because of what I’ve learnt from things like that.

  And, from things like that, I damn well know what Mac secretly thinks about me. So how’s he going to react now to the suggestion I’m thinking of coming out with? Of coming out with if the signs are by any chance right? How’s he going to react to me suggesting he should take money, a good big chunk, not to notice me stooping down and pulling out that blue folder from among the Symes documents? How?

  Not any doubt about it.

  Yet what else is left?

  He pushed open the car door, heaved himself out.

  Some days you felt your age all right.

  But nothing else for it. Do it. And hope.

  Moment of bloody awkwardness going past Horatio Bottomley, sitting there at his desk in the outer office, stubby brown fingers tap-tap-tapping, entering figures on the computer.

  Would he up and say, Mr Stallworthy, I know why you’re here. Just don’t come in any further?