The Bad Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  Herbie was right. This end of the stick, he did know nothing.

  So, putting himself firmly in Herbie’s hands - much though it hurt - he drove under his instructions to a place Herbie had spotted when they had been looking out the lie of the land.

  He tucked the car in under the shadow of the tall hedge and cut the lights.

  ‘You’ll have to lug the gear,’ Herbie said, a tang of spite in his voice. ‘Nice little job for you. But this is as near as it’ll be safe to go. Just you hope we don’t have to run for it, anything go wrong.’

  In silence Jack let himself be loaded up with two heavy sacks of climbing ropes and a large, empty holdall for whatever goodies Herbie found. Then they set off through the muggily warm darkness.

  Herbie, who was carrying no more than his small leather bag of tools, looked up at a full golden moon.

  ‘Could have done without that,’ he murmured.

  ‘Too bad, mate. Moon or no moon, it’s got to be tonight. Any later it’d be not at all.’

  ‘Don’t you get ratty with me. Got its good side, that old moon. Least I can see what I’m doing when it comes to throwing the rope up.’

  They walked on without speaking and climbed a gate into the field directly behind the building.

  At the high brick wall running the whole way round Headquarters Herbie came to a halt.

  ‘Tree somewhere about here,’ he said. ‘Saw it with them binocs. Should be near enough to the wall to get us over.’ Leaving Jack standing in the shadow of the wall, the two heavy sacks lowered gratefully to the ground, he set off to look.

  Christ, Jack thought, I’m glad I chose my side of the law when it came to it. Couldn’t take too much waiting about like this.

  A car went swishing along the road behind him, its lights climbing into the night as it took a rise.

  Jesus, what’ll happen if some bloody courting couple take it into their heads to stop off somewhere up there and don’t cut their lights straight away. Bloody great twin beams show me up, standing here looking like fucking Bill Sykes.

  Suddenly Herbie was beside him again.

  He gave a nervous start.

  Herbie laughed.

  ‘Got the wind up already, mate? Be a lot worse ‘fore we’re done.’

  ‘All very well for you, you’re used to this sort of bloody lark.’

  ‘And lucky for you I am. You’d be in the shit otherwise, Jack Stallworthy.’

  And am I going to be dropped in it still? No love lost with you, Herbie Cuddy. I’ve never wished before I hadn’t sussed you out at school pinching from the coats. But I’m not sure now I was as clever as I’ve always thought.

  ‘Come on then, sod you.’

  Herbie set off into the darkness underneath the high wall, leaving Jack to hoist up his two weighty sacks and the empty holdall and follow as best he might.

  But at the spot Herbie had chosen for getting over the wall he did give Jack some help. Using the tree on one side and the rough surface of the wall on the other, he had scrambled himself up on to the top in half a minute. But then, straddling the wall’s width, he had at least leant down, heaved up the two sacks one after another as Jack had held them up to him and finally had given Jack a hand to haul himself up, scraping and scratching at the rough brick surface, in his turn.

  Dropping to the ground like a sack of ropes himself, Jack thought with dread about the yet harder task that confronted him.

  God, am I ever going to get all the way up to that toilets window we picked on? Jesus, I ought to have kept myself fitter. Gone up to the gym just inside here, done me press-ups, whatever.

  Herbie had sat himself on the ground now.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ Jack said. ‘I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to, thank you very much.’

  Herbie looked up.

  ‘Got to put me socks on, ain’t I?’ From the pocket of his dark-coloured windcheater he pulled out a pair of thick seaman’s socks and began tugging them on over his boots.

  ‘What you—’ Jack began.

  And then he realized.

  Christ, yes, how many times had he watched the Forensics lads lifting shoeprints with the electro-static detection apparatus - You need a bit of the old ESDA here, skipper - when there had been a break-in big enough to justify it? And now, out here in the middle of the bleeding night, on the wrong side himself, he had damn nearly had to ask Herbie what he was doing. Like a sodding schoolkid.

  And should he have thought of taking the same precaution himself? Okay, he had surgical gloves for fingerprints, but he had never thought about the marks of his shoes being traced. And nor had Herbie, when they were discussing what would be needed, suggested socks. Happy if his old enemy did get detected? Quite likely. The bastard.

  But, in fact, he was almost certainly safe enough. Lifted shoeprints were only any use when you had some reasonable expectation of finding the person who wore the shoe. And was it likely anyone would suspect Detective Sergeant Stallworthy, best arrest record in CID? Especially when Herbie was going to break into half a dozen other offices besides Fraud Investigation.

  He waited till Herbie had got the big pair of socks well over his battered old boots, picked up his burdens and plodded off after him.

  Like a bleeding Arab servant or something.

  Then they were standing at the foot of the building, right underneath the toilets window they were aiming for. The toilets where Mac MacAllister - Get out of this office and never show your face in here again - had gone for a pee, leaving behind, guarding his files and figures, trustworthy Horatio Bottomley. No, Mr Stallworthy. All them papers is evidence.

  ‘Right, let’s have that sack, then.’

  Herbie pulled the sack he wanted roughly out of Jack’s grasp - he had held out the wrong one, bound to have done - opened it up and took from it a long double coil of thin rope with a three-pronged grapnel and a small pulley on the end. He stepped away from the blank wall of the building for some five or six yards. Stood twirling the end of the ropes in the air. Leant backwards and with an extraordinarily graceful movement for anyone as squat and well padded, sent grapnel and pulley flying high up into the air.

  In the strong pinkish moonlight Jack could follow the flight of the grapnel as clearly as if it was day. With a clunk that sounded much too loud in the pre-dawn stillness it struck the wall a few feet above the reeded glass of the toilets window.

  It struck the wall. It slithered down. It caught on the ornamental white stone course running all along the building just above the tops of the windows.

  Even Herbie, giving one of his ropes a cautious tug, looked pleased with himself.

  ‘Piece of cake, I told yer,’ he said, as it became clear the grapnel had bitten firmly in.

  ‘Good on you, mate,’ Jack said.

  Keep the bastard happy. Butter him up, every inch of the way. I need the sod. Need him. All I got between me and that fucking blue folder. Between me and taking Lil to Ko Samui, as promised.

  Working with practised rapidity, Herbie had now hauled a narrow rope-ladder up to where his pulley dangled just beneath the grapnel.

  “Ere, ‘Old this.’

  Obediently Jack took hold of the rope running down from the pulley Herbie had thrust at him, and stood there feeling like a lemon.

  From his second sack Herbie took a thick hooked iron spike and a heavy mallet. Choosing a spot just clear of the building’s foundations he began banging the spike deep into the ground.

  To Jack’s nerve-stretched ears the noise this operation made seemed to ring out like a clanging alarm far and wide into the night.

  He turned and looked up the hill to where they had left the car.

  ‘Hold that fucking rope, you cunt,’ Herbie spat out.

  Jack turned back to face the building, took an extra turn of the rope round his wrist.

  And waited.

  All the events that had brought him to his present ridiculous, absurd, dangerous predicament went processing through his mind.
>
  The first ever call from that little bitch Anna Foxton. The visit to her flat, Seaview Mansions. God, and how nearly he had not gone up there. Curiosity killed the cat.

  Glancing up at the thin, dangling rope-ladder he was holding in place by hanging on to his rope, he thought, And that may have been one curiosity that’ll kill this poor sod of a cat here.

  Then Emslie Warnaby, dark suit, heavy cloth, tailor-made to the last stitch, steam-rollering him into doing precisely what he wanted. And all the attempts he had had to make to do what it was bloody Warnaby had wanted. Pathetic. Ma Alexander at the bus-stop. In the canteen, digging and diving into her coat pockets. And being caught red-fucking-handed. Really-really big box of chocs all that saved him.

  And, worse if anything, sucking up to old Horatio there in the car, rain pissing down. And getting nowhere. Taking him off afterwards to the bus station. Had he given him a cheery wave? Christ knows.

  Then Mac MacAllister. Listening to his sad story. And having the stupidity to think he’d want to avenge himself on bloody Detective Chief Superintendent Detch, sir, by letting him pick up that blue folder almost at his feet. The folder he had actually got between finger and thumb later when old Horatio had come poking his silly grey head in, see what was the matter.

  And he had believed, just for a little, just for twenty-four marvellous hours or so, he had got himself off the hook. Lily seeming to be ready to settle for Devon and April Cottage. Not overjoyed, but for once being a bit realistic. Until fucking Anna Foxton had got on the phone.

  And then Herbie—

  ‘Come on, mate. Give us the bloody rope. What you doing? Having a fantasy wank?’

  He handed him the rope, saw that the spike had been driven into the ground right down to its hook, watched while Herbie made the rope fast to it.

  The seamanlike little sod.

  ‘All right, give me the holdall, stupid. You’re the one in a hurry to get out of here.’

  Suppressing any retort, he stooped, picked up the holdall, handed it over. Herbie dropped into it such tools as he would need in the building.

  Then, feeling with every moment a terrible sense of about-to-come vertigo, he watched Herbie climb up his well-secured rope-ladder. Like a fat little monkey, he thought.

  My God, and I’ve got to do that in a minute.

  If I’m going to get that folder. And I must. I must. Rest of my buggering life depends on it.

  Oh, Christ, how did I ever get into this?

  But I know. I know. I got into it the first time I ever took a real backhander. From then on I was done. If I’d only known it.

  But I had to do it. Would never have kept my Lil with me otherwise. Little English rose.

  Come to that, I’m not so sure I wouldn’t have gone that way, Lil or no Lil. Time would’ve come when I felt short of a few quid, and the chance would’ve been there. All too easy to grab.

  There came from above a tinkle of breaking glass. Looking up, he saw Herbie haul open the toilets window and heave himself inside.

  And after that, before he had had time to think, it was Herbie’s head re-emerging from the window and a hissed command to him to climb up in his turn.

  Now for it.

  He slipped his surgical gloves from his pocket and pushed his hands into them. Never do to leave his dabs on the wood of the window sill - if he ever got up there - he’d seen too many lifted from just that place himself not to know it was the most dangerous spot of all. To a bloody criminal. Setting his teeth, he grasped the highest point he could reach on the twisting wooden rungs, kicked a foot on to one of the lower ones, heaved.

  Well, I’ve begun.

  Another reach up. More floundering with a foot underneath him. Another heave. And on up and up again. And again.

  Must be nearly there now. Don’t feel too bad. This is easier than I thought.

  He looked up to the window.

  He was not nearly there. He was hardly a third of the way there.

  With a gulp and a big indrawn breath, he set off again. But, before he had hauled himself up as many rungs as at his first effort, he felt a trembling weakness in his arms and a lurch of sickness in his belly.

  He halted. Clung there in the bright moonlight. Felt sweat starting up all over him.

  ‘Christ, Jack, hurry up.’

  Herbie’s voice, raised above hissing point now, floated down to him.

  The shitty bugger.

  He attacked the rungs above him again in a frenzy of rage.

  And had to stop once more before he had got three feet higher.

  He looked up. Herbie’s head was no longer jutting out of the window.

  What if he closes it on me? The sod. He would. He’d do something like that. Wanting his revenge. Always has. Bugger it. Bugger it. Bugger it.

  He clung there again. Hands in his thin plastic gloves swimming in sweat.

  Don’t look down. Don’t, whatever you do, look down.

  What if somebody shone some car headlights up to where he was now? It would be the end of everything. But, Christ, he’d welcome that. He really would.

  Only, as the breath came back into his lungs and his heart stopped thudding, did the reason he was there where he was begin to make sense to him again.

  Jesus, yes. The blue folder, this time, really there for the fucking taking.

  He felt a surge of energy.

  Almost sobbing, with relief, with pain, he set himself to go on climbing, managing this time to take it more slowly. Or not being able to do anything else.

  And then, at last, he was there. Reaching up for one more rung he found he had taken hold of the sill. Another leg-up. Another. And he was high enough to thrust the top half of his body in.

  The room he was able to see, taking one swift look, was empty. Herbie, despising such a wally, must have set about making hay inside while the sun shone for him. Oh well, fine, so long as what he was doing stopped any investigation deciding that the Fraud Investigation office had been the real target.

  He lay for a few moments where he was, half in and half out of the window. Then with a painful wriggle and a heave he got the rest of his body in, if at the cost of finding himself eventually with his nose pressed against the tiled floor.

  He scrambled to his feet, made his way, unsteadily, to the door Herbie had left open behind him.

  Rounding the corner into the corridor, he saw that Herbie had done what had been agreed. Gone along the whole corridor breaking open every locked door. When he got to the second door along he saw him inside, already busy breaking open the drawers of a desk.

  Yeah, he won’t be in any hurry to lend me his jemmy. That’s for a cert. Still…

  He dug in his pocket. Trowel still there okay.

  He hurried on past.

  Then there it was. His door. His door broken wide open.

  The door he had so nearly got the key into before Ma Alexander had pounced on him. The door he had watched from the waiting room opposite until Mac had come out on his way to the toilets when, even after the way had been clear, he had still failed to get to that cupboard. That folder.

  Never mind, he had the trowel now. And for a cert it’d be strong enough to bust open a rotten old cupboard like that. Thank God, for the decent steel of its blade, and that he’d kept it cleaned in all the years he’d had it.

  He went inside at a run, through the outer office-Horatio Bottomley’s desk meticulously tidy—and into Mac’s room. There was the cupboard. Doors tight locked. As he had expected. But he had the trowel.

  He knelt and thrust the tip of its blade into the gap between the two doors. They were, he saw now, thicker than he had thought. In the days when a cupboard like this had been a standard item of office furnishing they made things to last.

  But lever at the gap. Lever carefully. Decent steel or no decent steel, too much pressure and some part of the trowel could give.

  A deep breath. Hold steady. And, now, gentle continuous force.

  ‘Jack! Jack!’


  He looked up, a startled thud jabbing pain through his heart.

  Herbie was there at Mac’s door.

  What the—

  ‘Can’t you fucking hear?’

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘Fucking police siren, you stupid berk. Someone must have seen us climbing in, phoned up. Come on, we got to scarper. They’ll be here in no time.’

  And, now that he was not concentrating on the cupboard, he could hear it perfectly well. The familiar wail of a police car in hot pursuit.

  ‘Come on, you berk.’

  ‘No.’

  He turned back to the cupboard.

  ‘You go on, Herbie. I’ll just…’

  He seized the trowel again, dug the blade in, just conscious behind him of Herbie’s steps running through the outer office, along down the corridor.

  Not now. Not now. I’m not going to be stopped now.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The trowel broke.

  Jack’s head, his eyes intently fixed between the cupboard doors, thumped hard forward on to the scarred surface, as the tool’s wooden handle, gripped in his hurry instead of the metal blade itself, came away from its holder.

  Rocking backwards on his knees, his mind shrill with despair, for a moment he stared on at the doors, transfixed. Then, scarcely conscious of what he was doing, he dug the fingers of both hands into the tantalizingly wide gap and tried scrabblingly to prise the doors apart. They did not budge by as much as a millimetre.

  At last, impinging again on his ears, came the sound of the police car’s siren. Yet nearer.

  For a moment more he knelt there where he was, stricken. Then he forced his mind grimly to admit the truth. He was not going to get to the folder.

  And, unless he was bloody quick, he was going to find himself arrested by a member of his own force, caught bang to rights.

  He scrambled up to his feet, headed for the outer office. Stopped, remembering the trowel. Evidence. His prints from all the days and years of work in the garden still on it somewhere. Despite all the rubbing it had got from the surgical gloves on his hands.