The Bad Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  At the estate he left the car, well locked up, at some distance from Herbie’s house and walked through the soft summer darkness. With ever-slowing steps.

  Now that the moment for winning over Herbie had come, he found it hard to make up his mind as to the best way to go about it. He had still come to no decision when he reached the house and saw, as he had begun to hope he would not, lights in the downstairs windows.

  But he had to talk to his old enemy. No getting past it. There was precious little time left. You couldn’t arrange a break-in at Abbotsport Constabulary Headquarters all in five minutes. You couldn’t even count on coming out of Herbie’s house after this evening’s bargaining with his agreement in your pocket. Or, rather, in your head.

  Then, could you trust Herbie?

  He went up to the door, past the battered old van that must have conveyed an angel gargoyle from the Abbey church to its eventual hiding place in Jeremiah Mickleton’s shed. Inside, the TV was blaring out. A video by the sound of it. Something with plenty of female screaming. Perhaps one of Norman Teggs’s specials. He pressed the doorbell, long and hard. But it was plain it was not working, probably been broken for months, even years. He lifted instead the tinny chrome door-knocker, in the shape of a naked woman - what else? - and banged it sharply down three, four, five times.

  Almost a minute passed without any reaction from inside - Herbie got something to hide away? - then he saw the flimsy curtain on the window nearest him pulled back. Gritting his teeth, he stepped away from the door to where he could be seen in the light.

  A moment later there came the sound of heavy steps and the door was jerked open.

  ‘Fucking Jack Stallworthy. So it is you. What you doing here?’

  ‘Want a word with you, Herbie, old mate.’

  ‘Well, you can fuck off.’

  ‘Be to your advantage, mate. God’s truth.’

  ‘Fuck off I said.’

  ‘No, Herbie, I mean it. This isn’t police business. Or not exactly.’

  Something in the tone of what he had said must have penetrated. Herbie stepped back.

  ‘Come in quick, then. D’you think I want everyone to know I’m talking to the filth?’

  He stepped in.

  Herbie thrust a fat, brawny arm past him and slammed the door closed.

  Uninvited, he walked into the front room.

  Yes, by the look of it it was a video nasty on the box. Not that the girl screaming away on it seemed to be upsetting Herbie’s woman. She was crouching there on the sagging sofa staring fixedly at the screen, her out-of-the-bottle harshly golden hair falling in two heavy swags in front of her.

  He turned to Herbie.

  ‘Can we talk in private?’

  ‘What the hell…? Nah, I should think she could hear anything you got to say.’

  ‘Just as you like, mate. Only if she does hear, you’re going to regret it.’

  Herbie shot him a look. His two little blue pig-eyes bright with suspicion.

  But he went over to the TV and flicked it into silence.

  ‘I was watching that.’

  ‘Then you can bloody watch it another time. Out.’

  With a look of mutinous dislike the woman got up and slouched out. Herbie banged the door closed behind her.

  ‘What’s all this, then? Not like you to keep mum about anything you think I wouldn’t like people knowing.’

  And still he had not made up his mind how he was going to broach the subject. It was a subject that should not be broached. But had to be.

  He took a sudden plunging decision.

  ‘I want you to break into Police Headquarters up at Palmerston Park.’

  ‘You gone raving bloody mad?’

  ‘No, Herbie, I ain’t. I’m putting a plain proposition to you. There’s something I want to get hold of, in one of the offices up there. I’ve tried to do it the crafty way, and I’ve come unstuck. That’s the truth of it. So now I want to do it the other way. And for that I need your help.’

  Herbie suddenly sat down, squatting like a toad on the sofa where his woman had been watching the video. He looked up.

  ‘Christ, this is good,’ he said. ‘This is the bloody best yet. Nose-in-the-air Jack Stallworthy coming to me and saying he wants to rob his own fucking Police Headquarters.’

  ‘Good or bad, that’s what I want.’

  ‘And you think I’m going to help you? You stupid sod. You’ve just given me what I’ve waited forty fucking years to get. My revenge on you, poxy Jack Stallworthy. Boy fucking detective.’

  Jack sighed.

  ‘Oh, yes. You can’t say anything to me I haven’t thought of already. But, all the same, I still want you to do it. It could be well worth your while, you know.’

  ‘Oh, yes? And how’s that, then? You’re not going to try telling me, while you’re getting whatever it is you want up there, I get my pick of anything going?’

  ‘Well, I am.’

  Herbie wagged his football head from side to side.

  ‘Let me tell you something, mate. If I was able to go up there to that place and come away with enough stuff to keep me in dinners till the end of my bleeding days and then some, I wouldn’t go one step into it with you. Not one sodding step.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say. More or less. But I gave you your chance. And now you’ve got to listen to me.’

  Herbie looked at him, a grin of pleasure still on his face.

  ‘Got to, have I?’

  ‘Yes, you bleeding have. And I’ll tell you why. I spent this morning out at old Jeremiah Mickleton’s place, and what d’you think I found there?’

  ‘How the hell should I know? Nosey fucking copper.’

  But there had been a split second when it was plain that Herbie well knew what there was to be found at Jeremiah’s.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. The gargoyle you climbed up to the roof of the Abbey church to nick. And, what’s more, I can link you to it. Right down to the night you did it. And the time. A Friday, right? June the twenty-first. Just before midnight.’

  ‘You can’t pin it on me from that.’

  ‘Oh, but I could. If I wanted. Might have to pretty up the evidence a bit, but I could get you bang to rights, mate.’

  ‘Coppers.’

  ‘Yes, coppers. Nasty lot, aren’t we? Almost as nasty as your lot, Harry Hook and his numerous bloody family, in and out of wedlock.’

  ‘Don’t you try tangling with Harry. He’d eat you for dinner.’

  ‘I’ve no intention of tangling with Harry. Just as soon as I’ve got what I want up at Headquarters, I’m away out of Abbotsport. I’ll tell you that for nothing.’

  ‘Away off, are you? End of great crime-busting career, is it?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it, yes.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t be around after to try and pin that gargoyle business on me?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  A shifty look in the little blue eyes.

  ‘But, if I don’t come with you on this break-in lark you’re on about, you’ll drop me right in the shit before you go? That it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘So I s’pose I ain’t got no alternative.’ ‘That’s it.’

  But before Jack set out with Herbie to break into Abbotsport Constabulary Headquarters - the job had to be done at a weekend when the place was closed up, with all phone calls transferred to the Central Police Station - he found that his dealings with Herbie had brought him, if only indirectly, more trouble.

  The two of them had already done a recce, armed with a pair of binoculars, police issue, lying in the grass on the hill at the back of the big Headquarters building. It was then Herbie had announced it looked as if the job was going to be easier than he’d thought.

  ‘Christ, mate, that window you said, it’s only one floor up. You ought to have gone nipping up there on your tod. Wouldn’t have had to come begging to me then, would you?’

  ‘And you’d have likely found yourself
doing a three-stretch for nicking that gargoyle. At the least. The old Vicar’s hopping mad, you know. Bloody Argus flooded with letters from all the bigwigs in the town.’

  ‘Fat lot I care.’

  ‘And, in any case, how would I have got up to the window? That wall there’s like a cliff. It’s the sodding gymnasium on the ground floor at the back, you know. All bloody wallbars inside and no windows looking out.’

  ‘Don’t you know nothing, you dozy copper? Ain’t you never heard of a grapnel? Easy to see you ain’t never been out to sea.’

  ‘Grapnel? You mean something you throw and it hooks on something?’

  ‘What the fuck else would I mean? And take a bleeding look up there. Nice little stone ridge just above that toilets window with the reeded glass. Easy as pie, get up there, smash a pane, have the window open.’

  So for a couple of days after that Jack had felt he might in the end, despite the ridiculous riskiness of what he planned, bring the whole business off. The blue folder. The Calm Seas Hotel, Ko Samui. Then, from a quite unexpected quarter, came the trouble.

  Before he could see if Herbie’s way into Headquarters was as easy as he had claimed, he was summoned up there himself. To see Detective Chief Superintendent Detch.

  When the Guv’nor told him he was wanted he thought, in immediate panic, that somehow someone had got wind of the whole plan. Herbie double-crossing him? No. No, it couldn’t be. Herbie had too much to lose. Or was convinced he had.

  So eventually it was with only the smallest niggling of worry that he presented himself in front of DCS Detch’s wide, polished desk.

  ‘I’ve heard something about you, Stallworthy.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  Keep it respectful. Think of what this sod did to old Mac MacAllister. Dangerous bugger, if ever there was.

  ‘Yes. Name Teggs mean anything to you? Norman Teggs?’

  For a moment it did not. That productive quarter of an hour at the Video Magic shop back in April had faded almost to nothing in his memory.

  But then he remembered.

  Christ, has that shitbag Teggs found a way of saying I took that thousand quid off him, all without laying himself open to trouble?

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he answered. ‘Teggs runs a video place down by the docks. I had occasion to give him a going-over some months back. Thought he was selling porn.’

  He hesitated then. But there seemed nothing else for it but to stick to the story he had entered in the files at the time.

  ‘Didn’t find anything though, sir. Could be he took warning when I first went in the shop. I was just looking for a gardening video I wanted, matter of fact, and I happened to see something I thought was a bit dodgy.’

  ‘So you took it on yourself to harass this chap, Sergeant?’

  Harass?

  Well, of course I did. But didn’t the fucker deserve to be harassed? At the very least. Christ, that tape he tried to get me to look at. But go carefully. Detchie could be leading up to something.

  ‘Well, sir, I wouldn’t say harass. But, as I’d seen some tapes on his counter that looked iffy, least I could do was follow up.’

  ‘Was it, sergeant? Well, let me put it to you that the least you could do is a bit of hard detecting.’

  Hey, nobody could say I’m not… What is this? But keep it down.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Hard detecting of whoever it was who stole a very valuable gargoyle right off the roof of the Abbey church, and seemingly got clean away with it, yes? Bloody paper full of letters talking about police incompetence. The Chief on to me two or three times a day.’

  Bloody Herbie. Fucking Vicar. Sodding Chief.

  Stupid me, too. I could’ve had that business nicely sewn up, ‘cept for Herbie. Could have had him charged and in the cells. Had the bloody gargoyle waiting to go back to the bloody church. Had a nice one on my record, what’s more. Vicar writing to the Chief, and, I dare say, another of those smarmy letters signed R. J. Parkinson, Chief Inspector.

  If it hadn’t been I had to have Herbie showing me how to get up into that fucking Fraud Investigation office. That fucking old cupboard. That fucking, fucking blue folder.

  But keep on playing it cool. Lick arse. Nothing else to do.

  ‘Sir, yes, I was put on to that gargoyle case. And I’ve done a hell of a lot of work on it, Sir. Tried every angle I can think of. I was out last Friday interviewing a certain Jeremiah Mickleton, Grinton Metals. List of inquiries against him long as my arm. But he’s too fly to be caught with anything dodgy on his premises, Sir, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Is it, Sergeant? Well, I suggest there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that. So just you keep your nose to that particular grindstone from now on, and leave petty villains like Norman Teggs to peddle whatever it is they’re peddling without wasting a hell of a lot of costly police time. Yes?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  Thoughtfully he made his way down from Detective Chief Superintendent Detch’s lofty office. But at the first floor he could not help coming to a halt.

  Should he take one more look at the Fraud Investigation door? If it should be open by any chance … Then it could be Sod off Herbie Cuddy, don’t need you any more. Got what I wanted now. I could even have Herbie for the gargoyle job, after all. Wouldn’t half please bloody Detch, that.

  But, no. No point. The Fraud door’ll never be left gaping wide. Pigs never do fly.

  But all the same, he thought as he resumed his downward march, a nasty piece of work like Norman Teggs, copying that kiddy porn filth. He wasn’t any petty villain to be left to get on with it, never mind what Detective Chief Superintendent Detch, Sir, said. The shitbag had probably not even done anything about disposing of those tapes he’d told him to burn. Was probably still selling them at a fat profit to whatever creeps he had coming to that place, and making yet more copies.

  Getting into the car and savagely revving his engine, he decided he would damn well go straight down to the docks and pay a call on Master Teggs. Detch or no Detch.

  Video Magic looked from the outside just as unmagical in the hazy sunshine of July as it had looked in the clear sunlight of April.

  He went in.

  The place was doing no business. Norman Teggs, wearing the identical shiny brown suit with the barely visible white stripes he had on in April, was sitting idly behind the counter on what looked like a seat from some disused cinema. Cigarette dangling from thinlipped mouth. Only the plastic of the counter seemed a bit more buckled than he remembered it.

  ‘A very good morning to you, my friend,’ he said. ‘Remember who I am by any chance?’

  The only answer he got was a look of animal malice.

  ‘I asked if you remembered me. And I’ve got something else to ask, too. I told you to get rid of that filth you made copies of. You done it?’

  But now Norman Teggs was not as easily cowed as he had been before.

  ‘Yes, I remember you now, copper,’ he said. ‘And I’ve got news for you. I ain’t the owner of this place any more. Sold out, I have. Just the manager now. Manager for a certain Mr Hook. Heard of him, have you? Harry Hook?’

  ‘Harry Hook own this shitheap now?’

  ‘Yes, he does. And, if you want my advice, you’ll keep that in mind. Mr Hook ain’t exactly anybody I’d like to come up against if I was giving him any aggro.’

  Jesus, no, nor would I, certainly not at this bloody moment when I’m counting on Herbie Cuddy, cousin of some sort to the whole bleeding Hook family.

  ‘Well, then, let’s hope this place is going to be run a bit better from now on,’ he said, knowing it was feeble though the best he could rise to. ‘If I come in here again, looking for a video of The Lovely World of Lilies, perhaps that’s what I’ll get, and not a load of blinking nasties.’

  ‘P’raps it’s what you’ll get, and p’raps it ain’t. I just wouldn’t come in here again ever, I was you. I’m surprised you poked your nose in now.’

  Game, set and ma
tch to Mr Teggs. And Harry Hook behind him.

  He turned and walked out.

  Nothing else to be done. And, come to think, not all that surprising Harry Hook’s got his paws on the place. Must be a sweet little racket.

  There was a time when I wouldn’t have rested till I’d put an end to it. But those days are gone. It’s do what you’re told to do by the big money now. The Emslie Warnaby money.

  Sod it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jack’s only contribution to the equipment for the break-in at Police Headquarters was his trusty old garden trowel. Bringing it with him was a last-minute thought. All right, it looked as if Herbie could be relied on to get them both into the building. And, of course, Herbie would have a jemmy for forcing locked doors there, including the one into the Fraud Investigation office. But when that was open Herbie might well say he needed the jemmy himself, for desk drawers or whatever. Be his idea of a big joke. Get his playground enemy to give him the freedom of all the goodies in Police Headquarters, and then stop him getting whatever it was he’d come there to get. It was almost certain now that the cupboard with the Symes material would have to be forced open. If Horatio Bottomley had said anything at all to Mac MacAllister about finding him trying to take something from it, Mac would have pushed in those bulging files, turned his new key in the lock and put it firmly in his pocket.

  The idea that Herbie might play such a trick had come to him only on Sunday a few hours before they were due to make the break-in. No chance of shopping for a lever or a heavy chisel. So, going to the shed, well knowing there was nothing neatly hung up among his gardening tools that would really be right, he had at last taken the trowel. For all its well-worn wooden handle, its blade was still good and strong.

  They took Jack’s own car. He had wanted to use Herbie’s van, but met with a sharp objection.

  ‘Jesus, don’t you know nothing? Thought you was meant to be a number one detective. You got any idea how many times I get a pull driving about in the van?’

  He reconsidered. Needed a big jump to see things villain’s way up. Of course, every traffic patrolman in the force would have the number of Herbie’s van in his head. Every time they spotted it they would pull him up. He’d been bloody lucky not to have been stopped going out with the angel to Jeremiah Mickleton. Probably too skint before he got Jeremiah’s five hundred quid to be able to hire something else, and not inclined to add to the risks by nicking anything.