‘But I told you, love. I explained. That was different. Different.’
‘Oh, don’t kid yourself, Jack, my lad. You’ve been on the take for years, and on the take is on the take. There’s nothing so different about what you’re being asked to do now.’
‘But there is. There’s one hell of a difference between the hundred quid that—all right - that I’ve got in my pocket this minute, or between the thousand quid I took off a nasty piece of work with a video shop down by the docks and put on a horse called April Fool… There’s a hell of a difference between things like that and what millionaire Emslie Warnaby’s offering me.’
‘Oh, don’t be so soppy. Mr Warnaby says the file’s only something somebody took away from the Fisheries place by mistake. It’s not important really.’
‘If you believe that you’d believe anything. You don’t think a man like Warnaby’s going to pay out all he’s offering us just to get back some papers he’d find a bit useful? No. Whatever’s in that folder is dynamite for him, and he knows it. He knows it so bloody well he’s willing to give me a whole fucking hotel, and first-class air tickets thrown in. And that’s not for nothing. It’s to get back a folder that’d tell Fraud Investigation they’ve got a major bloody criminal in their hands. Someone who’ll make poncy Councillor Symes look like chicken-shit. That’s what your Mr Emslie Warnaby wants. That’s why I’m being offered one hell of a bribe: because there’s one hell of a crime, whatever in the end it turns out to be, to be kept from the light of day.’
‘Well, what if there is? What if there is? Emslie Warnaby wouldn’t be the first big-time crook who’s been allowed to get away with it. And it’s just our piece of luck that you’re the one who happens to be able to do what he wants. Just our luck that at the end of it, even if Emslie Warnaby and Anna are laughing, we’ll be living a lovely life on the island of Ko Samui.’
And then he knew he was really and truly done for. Nothing he had said had changed Lily’s mind. It had been no use telling her all he’d done and all he’d risked to get at that folder. It had been no use trying to persuade her that a life down in Devon would be well enough in its way, that they would even be happy together there. It had been so much wasted breath trying to make her see that there was a difference between the thousand quid he had screwed out of that nasty villain Norman Teggs and the cost of a whole hotel on a far-off paradise island that Emslie Warnaby was dangling in front of him.
No use at all.
It would have to be getting the blue folder. And just hope getting it wouldn’t result in it getting him.
Chapter Fourteen
Jack stumbled across to his chair, dropped down into it.
‘That bitch Anna leave you a phone number?’ he asked.
‘Yes, she did, matter of fact. Why d’you want to know?’
Rage simmered in him. Words urgent to burst out.
Because, as you could’ve damn well worked out, I’ve got to tell her I’m still going to try to get Mr Emslie Warnaby his precious folder. Because what I’ve got to do is beg, bloody bloody beg, to have that deadline extended so that somehow - and God knows how, even now - in the end I get you to Ko Samui.
‘I’m going to ring her up. That’s why. Why else would I want her fucking telephone number?’
‘Language.’
‘What’s the number?’
‘It’s there inside the lid of that box of chocs, where I wrote it down.’
He pushed himself up, feeling his own weight like a heavy punching-bag dragging at his heart, and made his way over to the phone.
‘Anna Foxton?’
‘Ah, it’s Sergeant Stallworthy. I thought you’d be calling.’
Oh, yes, you bitch. You knew I would. God, how I’d like to take you by your two shoulders and shake you till the last bit of cockiness comes rattling out.
‘Yes. I am calling. You know where to put the pressure on, don’t you?’
‘Well, I certainly enjoyed talking to your wife, Sergeant. Most enlightening.’
‘Never mind my wife. Look, if I’m to get that sodding folder for you I’ve got to have a bit more time.’
‘Yes. We thought you might want that. Well, Mr War - or - or, shall we say, my principal is over in America on business at present. But we’ve discussed things, and, though it’s not exactly convenient, we think we can change the dates for our little holiday. So we can give you another two weeks. Not a day more.’
‘All right.’
‘That’s till the thirtieth. A fortnight next Tuesday. Don’t make any mistake about it. Up till midnight that day. Till midnight. By then we’ve got to have that folder. All right?’
‘All right.’
He had wanted to add Damn you, but he checked himself. He might need yet another extension, and the little bitch had better be kept as sweet as possible. Not that he was likely to get any more time. Not from the way she had spoken.
So bloody Warnaby must be beginning to sweat then. Serve the bugger right.
In the meanwhile, how the heck to get at the folder?
He went back to his chair, sat and huddled himself up in a cocoon of misery.
‘Well, how are you going to get Mr Warnaby his folder?’
Lily’s voice sliced into his wrapped-up gloom like a buzz saw.
He looked across at her.
‘How the hell do I know?’ he said. ‘I told you, didn’t I? I’ve tried every sodding thing I could think of. And all I’ve done is make it harder for myself.’
‘But there must be some way you can do it.’
Oh, yes, there must be some way. Just because you want it, Lily Stallworthy, there must be a way. Just because you want to spend the rest of your life lazing in the sun on Ko bloody Samui there must be a way of getting there.
‘Well, there ain’t no way. Or not any way I can think of.’
He shifted round till he was facing the wall and could no longer see her, tucked into the corner of that big chair of hers like a contented little squirrel.
Or not so contented.
‘Well, if you haven’t managed to trick your way into that office, wherever it is up at Palmerston Park, why can’t you just go up there and break into it?’
There had been a distinct whining note of complaint in that.
‘Oh, yes? Just go and break in there? Easy, wouldn’t it be? A break-in inside fucking Abbotsport Constabulary Headquarters.’
‘All right, if that’s too difficult for you, think up some new dodge. You ought to be able to think of something, tricks you’re always playing at. Holding on to half of what you find when you arrest someone, pretending you haven’t got a case against someone if they’ve paid you to keep mum, turning a blind eye when some crime’s staring you in the face.’
‘Okay, so I do all of that. No need to throw it in my face.’
‘I’m not throwing anything in your face. I’m just telling you that you could find a way of getting that folder for Anna if you really tried. You could. By trickery. Or burglary. Never mind which.’
‘Oh yes? Easy enough to say. But what you seem to forget is you married a police officer. I may have learnt a few dirty tricks in my time. I don’t say I ain’t. But, by God, I’ve never taught myself to go housebreaking.’
‘Well, if you haven’t, you’d better find someone who can to teach you, hadn’t you? You’ve got enough mates in among the villains. You’re always saying so. Get on to one of them. Learn whatever it is they know and you don’t.’
‘If I’ve got villains for mates, my girl, it’s only because it’s part of my job. How d’you think I’ve got myself the best arrest record in the whole of Abbotsport CID? It’s by going drinking with the villains and keeping my bloody ears open. That’s how.’
‘All right, then, go drinking with them some more. And when you find the right one, ask him what you’ve got to do to get in there. Or, better still, get him to go along with you. Show you on the spot. Get him to do the hard work for you, if you ain’t up to it yourself.’
He nearly upped then and gave her a slap.
Only he never had yet, and knew he never would.
And also because he had come to realize, as she had hammered away at him, just who it was he would have to go to and ask to be given an on-the-spot break-in demonstration.
Herbie Cuddy. Roof climber. Hook family member. Old enemy from faraway schooldays.
But he still had sense enough to go cautiously. Herbie would never, he saw at once, consent to try breaking into Abbotsport Constabulary Headquarters just for the asking. Even if he told him there would be plenty of good pickings there.
So, a bribe of some sort? For a little he totted up the total in the Cadbury’s Roses tin and wondered how much of it would be needed to get Herbie to take the risk. Let alone to rush him into helping his old enemy.
If only Herbie was skint. But just now he was almost certainly in funds. Hadn’t he, not so long ago, stolen from the Abbey church an angel gargoyle, God knows how old? Been there for centuries. Valuable beyond words, the Vicar had said. Said time and again.
So Herbie, almost for a cert, would just laugh at whatever he was offered. In a month or two things might be different. Herbie, the gargoyle cash boozed away, might well jump at a bribe then. Only there was not a month or two before Emslie Warnaby had to be handed that folder. There was only a little over three weeks, even with that extension he’d just got.
And then, trying to bring himself to think of how a meeting with Herbie might go, seeing himself making his way up the path to that house on the St Oswald Estate, he suddenly remembered the van in the front garden there.
A wreck of a van in the wreck of the garden.
And a wreck of a van would not be easy to drive at speed for a good long distance. When he had first thought of Herbie as the one who most probably had stolen the angel he had said to himself that, in the time between him prising it off its perch on the church roof and the Vicar noticing it was gone, he would have had weeks to have taken it to a dealer miles away. But with that van of his in the state it was, in all likelihood he would not have gone miles away. Could not have done. He would have to have sold the gargoyle to the nearest dodgy dealer he could call to mind.
Any thief who knew his stuff - and Herbie had been brought up in the Hook family - would hang on to a stolen object only for the shortest possible time. But with a dealer it would be quite a different matter. However much they knew or suspected something they had been sold was hot, they would have to keep it till they had found some more or less legit buyer.
So that angel gargoyle - he had a good description, thanks to photos that had been taken for a historical pamphlet they sold in the church - might well be hidden away somewhere not too far from Abbotsport itself. Somewhere that could be fairly easily located. And when it was, there might well be something there that linked it nicely to Herbie Cuddy.
Which would give him as good a hold over Herbie as he could possibly ask for.
He called up the files as soon as he got in next morning, on time for once. ‘Look who’s here,’ cheeky bugger Pete Hoskins called out. ‘Fire broke out at your place, Jack?’
He had hardly bothered to answer. Five minutes head down in the files and he had come up with a perfect answer. Grinton Metals, Prop. Jeremiah Mickleton. And a list as long as your arm of inquiries made at the place. But no prosecutions for three or four years past. Old Jeremiah - he remembered him from when he had been out there himself long ago - must be somebody’s snout, then. Allowed to do a bit of fencing, or more than a bit, in exchange for information received. And someone’s promotion prospects improving.
Almost for a cert, Jeremiah was the one. Grinton only some ten miles along the coast, the place where Harry Hook had built his smarty-pants Costa Loadsa, a twenty-five-minute run, even in Herbie Cuddy’s rotten old van. Herbie probably had got rid of the angel inside an hour from when he had lowered it down from the Abbey church roof. And, if Grinton Metals did turn out to be a no-no, there were still two or three other possibles on the file. But, let them wait, get out to Grinton straight away.
A picture came into his mind of some fly antiques dealer from London or somewhere even at that moment negotiating with scrawny old Jeremiah over buying the gargoyle. Can’t tell you where I got it, mister. Just don’t ask, right?
But at least when he arrived at Jeremiah’s pigsty of a yard - yes, there were a few stone garden urns about, plus a statue of some old god or other wearing a flat hat with little wings sprouting out of it, and half a running leg missing - there was no one in a vehicle with London number plates there haggling.
‘Sergeant Stallworthy. I remember you,’ unshaven, peering-eyed Jeremiah snarled as he stepped out of the car.
‘That’s right, my son. We have met before, long time ago though. Load of stolen scaffolding, wasn’t it? Couldn’t quite pin it on you.’
‘Weren’t for want o’ trying.’
‘Well, we have to do our job, you know. And that’s why I’m here now, matter of fact. Anything on your conscience, by any chance?’
‘Last time you was here you said I hadn’t got no conscience.’
‘Did I? I wonder what made me make a remark like that. Fancy you remembering. Can it have been because I knew you were lying in your teeth every minute we talked?’
‘I don’t know what it was. And I don’t care neither. What you want now?’
‘Oh, I just want you to be your usual self, Jeremiah. Just the angel you always are.’
And, bingo, a flicker of alarm at the word angel as he had put just that little extra emphasis on it.
‘What you give Herbie Cuddy for it then, Jeremiah?’
‘Herbie been - I never gave Herbie Cuddy nothing. I don’t even know him. Who is he?’
‘Oh, Jeremiah, really. You ought to be a bit cleverer. If you’re going to end your days out of prison.’
Look of alarm yet plainer now.
Jack let his body sag into a more relaxed state.
‘Not to worry, old son. Not to worry. It ain’t you I’m after this time. It’s just that Herbie gave me a nod in your direction, and I thought I ought to chase it up.’
And now a look of vicious fury came on to the old man’s dirt-seamed face.
‘He’d no call to go talking about me, that Herbie. What’s he said? I ain’t done nothing wrong. If I bought something from him, and I ain’t saying I did, I bought it in good faith.’
‘Oh, yes? He tell you how he happened to come by a sodding great stone angel then?’
‘It wasn’t that. That wasn’t what I got off him.’
‘No? Mind if I have a look round?’
The old man’s eyes went like two lasers straight towards a tumbledown shed at the corner of the yard. It was laughable.
‘Okay, Jeremiah. Now, if I take a look in that shed there and say nothing about what I find, will you tell me exactly when Herbie Cuddy came to you and flogged off that stone gargoyle from Abbotsport Abbey church? You do that, and it’ll be the last you hear about it. Scout’s honour.’
‘But can I believe you, Mr Stallworthy?’
‘Well, you ain’t got much option, have you?’
So then Jeremiah had gone with him over to the shed, hauled the key for its padlock from somewhere in his ancient sagging trousers, and opened up.
For a moment or two, coming out of the bright July sunlight beating down on Jeremiah’s dusty shambles of a yard, Jack could make nothing out. But soon his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. And he picked out in a mote-thick ray coming in through a gap in the boards something wrapped in an untidy shroud of sacking.
‘Let’s see then,’ he said to Jeremiah.
The old man pulled the filthy sacking aside. And it was the angel. Jack hardly needed to take out the photo to check.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Herbie Cuddy sold you this? When was it?’
‘Fortnight ago. Three weeks.’
‘No, come on. I want the date exactly. Don’t tell me you haven’t got it stored aw
ay in your head, even if you’re damn careful never to put anything in the books.’
The old man gave him a glare. Hardly softened by the gloom inside the shed.
‘Three weeks ago today, if you must know. June the twenty-first. Friday.’
‘You’re sure of that? It was that night Herbie came out here with it?’
‘You’re the one who says I keeps it all in me head. Well, I do. It was the twenty-first. By about ten minutes. Ten minutes to midnight he came.’
‘All right, keep your hair on. So, what you give Herbie for it then?’
‘Five hundred. And he was lucky to get that.’
‘And how much will you be lucky to get when you can find a dealer who likes it, eh? No, don’t answer. Far as I’m concerned you can get what you can. I’ve found out all I want.’
‘But you won’t tell Herbie, Sergeant? Promise me you’ll keep my name out of it.’
‘Oh, I don’t think you need worry. Any business between Herbie and me is private. Strictly private.’
Chapter Fifteen
Jack was tempted to drive back straight away into Abbotsport and out to the St Oswald Estate to transact his strictly private business with Herbie Cuddy. But a little reflection decided him otherwise. However much ammunition he now had to pressure Herbie into doing what he wanted, having a car parked outside his house that plenty of people on the crime-infested estate would recognize would not please him. And now more was needed than just Herbie’s agreement to breaking into Headquarters. His full co-operation.
So he went back to the police station, caught up with a bit of paperwork - his Incident Report Book was way behind: catching villains higher priority than writing down their names - and eventually made his way home.
Then, as it began to get dark, he went round the garden with the watering-can. The night before in the end he had been too exhausted by his row with Lily to go out. And at last, when the pubs would have safely called last orders and fewer people be about, he set off.
The Bad Detective Page 14