by Bob Cook
Chapter Thirty-three
AROOM IN THE POLICE STATION had been set aside for Stringer’s use. The police in this part of Kent were not accustomed to receiving visits from “London high-ups”, and they felt highly flattered by Stringer’s presence. Stringer regarded them as a bunch of country bumpkins, and he treated them as such, but this only prompted further displays of grovelling servility from his hosts.
“We’ve got Jack Goodhart here, sir,” the duty sergeant said. “Now if there’s anything you want—coffee, tea—just call me. The Inspector’s got a bottle of something stronger, if you feel like that, and—”
“Just show the guy in,” Stringer said flatly.
“Right you are, sir.”
The sergeant scuttled off, leaving Stringer to reflect wearily on the leisurely pace of rural life.
“Bloody hayseed,” he muttered.
After several days of careful investigation, Kevin’s inquiries had borne fruit: one of the night staff at the phone exchange had recently admitted two “special engineers” for whom no records could be found. Almost certainly, these were the people who had interfered with the tap on Mr Blake’s line. Now Stringer was about to interview the man who had let them in, in the hope of gleaning further clues about their identity.
“Jack Goodhart, sir,” the sergeant said, as he showed in the bewildered phone engineer. “If there’s anything else you need—”
“I’ll call you,” Stringer said. “Thanks.”
“Use that phone,” the sergeant said, pointing to one of two phones on the desk. “The other one’s out of order—”
“Sergeant,” Stringer said heavily, “do me a favour and piss off, will you?”
“Yes sir,” the sergeant said humbly, and he withdrew from the office.
“Right,” Stringer said briskly. “Your name’s Jack Goodhart, yes?”
The other man nodded.
“I don’t know what this is about, squire…”
“You were doing the night shift at your exchange on the night of Friday the twenty—”
“Is this about them two special engineers?”
“Just answer the questions, Jack,” Stringer advised. “We’ll get through it quicker that way.”
“I’m entitled to a lawyer,” Jack said. “I know my rights. The police have to offer you a solicitor before—”
“Bollocks,” Stringer said elegantly. “For starters, I’m not a cop.”
“You’re not?”
“No. And nobody’s charging you with anything. I just want some information, see?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, but he sounded far from convinced.
“But I’ll tell you this,” Stringer added. “Ever since I came here, I’ve been pissed around by just about everybody I’ve met, and I’m getting a bit bored with it.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Jack murmured.
“So am I Jack, so am I. And if you piss me around as well, I’m going to lose my patience. Like I say, Jack, I’m not a cop, and I can’t arrest you. But if you don’t tell me everything you know at the first time of asking, I can get somebody else to arrest you on any one of a dozen charges.”
“Such as?”
“Accessory to any one of twenty crimes, conspiracy to interfere with the telephone system—”
“Conspiracy?” Jack howled. “Come off it, squire.”
“Well, if you don’t help me,” Stringer reasoned, “it must be because you’re helping the villains.”
“I’m not,” Jack insisted.
“In that case, tell me what you know about them. What did they look like?”
“There was two of them,” Jack said. “They were both old geezers—”
“How old?”
“Sixty-five, seventy? Something like that.”
“What?” Stringer exclaimed.
“You heard me.”
Stringer scratched his head.
“Jack,” he asked, “what’s the retirement age in your line of work?”
“Sixty, usually.”
“Didn’t you think these guys might be a little old for that sort of job?”
“Sure,” Jack said. “But their ID was in order. They were driving the right kind of van—one of the Reserve-fleet jobs. And them special engineers aren’t like the rest of us, anyway. I don’t know when they retire.”
Stringer sighed, and began to take notes.
“You say their ID was all right. Did you check it?”
“Not closely,” Jack admitted.
“Did you read it?”
“No,” Jack said hesitantly. “Not really.”
Stringer looked upwards in disgust.
“Not really,” he repeated. “Christ Almighty.”
“Well, like I say, their van was for real, and—”
“Sure,” Stringer said understandingly. “I don’t know why we bother with ID cards. We should just give everybody a van instead. Problem solved, eh Jack?”
Jack shifted uncomfortably.
“Did they tell you what they were doing?” Stringer asked.
“No,” Jack said. “Just like the last lot. They asked me to make them coffee, and that was it.”
“You say they were old men. Can you give me a more detailed description?”
Jack screwed up his eyes in concentration.
“Well,” he said, “they were both posh. Well spoken, you know?”
Stringer nodded.
“Carry on.”
“One of them was about my height. Had a gammy leg, I think.”
“He walked with a limp?”
“Yeah, just slightly. And the other one was taller. A lot taller, as a matter of fact. Well over six foot. Quite skinny.”
Stringer wrote this down.
“Anything else? Think hard.”
Jack paused for further reflection. Then he raised his finger triumphantly.
“I remember now. One of them was chewing bubble-gum.”
“Bubble-gum? You mean chewing-gum, don’t you?”
“No, bubble-gum. He kept blowing bubbles. Pretty funny really, an old guy like that with kids’ bubble-gum.”
Stringer’s jaw dropped. He sat back in the chair, and gazed at Jack in stupefaction.
“Which of them was it?” he breathed.
“The tall one,” Jack said. “Quite a funny geezer, now I remember him.”
Stringer put down his pen, and blinked in amazement. There was only one old man he knew who was tall, well-spoken and chewed bubble-gum. There could only be one such man.
“Well, fuck me,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-four
“IS IT, INDEED?” SYBIL SAID. “I see…Would you have the address by any chance…? Yes, I’ll hold… PO Box 5367, Al Rasheed Street, Baghdad…Yes, I’ll take their telex number, if you have it…213090. Thank you very much for your help. Goodbye.”
She put down the phone and smiled. Things were going very nicely indeed. Sybil’s first suspicion had been confirmed. Now it was a question of pursuing the new lead to its conclusion. To do this she needed the help of an old friend.
She popped her notes into her handbag, and went out into the hallway to put on her overcoat. Then she looked into the drawing-room, where Ogden & Co. were working on the latest instalment of the memoirs.
“How about another hired assassin?” Ogden suggested. “They’re always guaranteed to liven things up.”
“Good move,” the Laird nodded. “Let’s have a hunchback.”
“Four feet tall, with a blood-curdling leer,” added the Vicar. “And huge, powerful hands. Can kill his victims with one blow to the skull.”
“A truly nasty piece of work,” Beauchamp said enthusiastically. “Broken teeth, yellow skin—”
“Scabs,” said the Vicar. “Syphilitic scabs.”
“And a limp,” Ogden said.
“Careful,” the Laird warned. “We did a limping villain two weeks ago…”
Ogden blew a brilliant pink gum-bubble, burst it, and nodded.
“Quite r
ight,” he conceded. “Mustn’t debase the currency. Very well: why not give him a glass eye?”
“Better still,” Beauchamp said, “no eye at all. Just a gaping socket…”
“I’m going out,” Sybil announced. “I’ll be taking the car.”
“Cheerio, dear,” the Vicar said absently. “You know, chaps, I think this hunchback should try to ravish some beautiful woman.”
“A sex-fiend!” Ogden said brightly. “Now that’s an idea…”
Sybil snorted contemptuously, and left the house. She had little use for one-eyed midget hunchbacked sex-fiends at the best of times, but now the proposition seemed especially trivial. Sybil had more important things to consider. She got in the car, and drove north.
Alison Wainwright had been a friend of Sybil’s for over fifty years. They had both attended the same girls’ boarding school, an establishment which prided itself on turning out ladies of strong character. But whereas Sybil had devoted her life to husband and home, Dr Wainwright had thrown herself into her studies, and took a university degree in chemistry. A Ph.D. soon followed, and this led to a research fellowship. But Dr Wainwright never attained the lofty heights of a professorial chair, and she eventually retired to a house in Hampstead, where her final years were being spent on a detailed study of witchcraft and mysticism.
Dr Wainwright had no difficulty in reconciling her scientific career with a passion for the occult. Her bookshelves sagged beneath the weight of countless mystical books and periodicals, and her walls were decorated with pentagrams and other arcane symbols. There was no furniture in her house, apart from a colourful collection of prayer mats. The remaining space was taken up by candelabras, joss-stick holders, and similar ritualistic bric-à-brac.
Dr Wainwright herself was a tall, red-haired lady who wore long flowery dresses and silken headscarves. In comparison with her friend she looked positively Bohemian, but Sybil was surprisingly respectful of Alison’s passion for the transcendental.
“You’re looking well,” Sybil observed, as she struggled to make herself comfortable on a prayer mat.
“You too,” Dr Wainwright smiled. “Have you been drinking that herbal tea I recommended? It does wonders for the blood.”
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” Sybil said. “I’ve been taking it regularly, and I’m sure it’s been most beneficial.”
In fact, Sybil had hesitated for some time before trying out the tea in question. But upon drinking her first cup, she found that the infusion looked and tasted like untreated sewage, and that was quite enough to convince Sybil of its medicinal worth.
“Anyway,” Dr Wainwright said, “you told me on the phone that this was not just a social visit, and that you needed my help with something. I’ve spent the last two days trying to guess what it could be: an evil spirit in your house, perhaps? Has Godfrey been possessed by—”
“No,” Sybil said hastily, “it’s nothing like that. Actually, it’s to do with chemistry.”
Dr Wainwright’s shoulders sagged in disappointment.
“Oh. That.”
“I’m afraid so,” Sybil said, and she took her papers out of her handbag. “Tell me: what’s POC13?”
“Phosphorus oxychloride,” Dr Wainwright said.
“Excellent,” Sybil nodded. “Just as I suspected.”
“Is that all?”
“No, Alison, it’s just the start. Let me explain.”
Sybil gave a potted account of the abortive arms deal, the mysterious shipment—or non-shipment—on the SS Flavio, and Sybil’s own latest theory on the subject. Dr Wainwright listened with mounting interest, and by the time Sybil had finished, her eyes were wide with excitement.
“Gosh,” she said. “How intriguing!”
“Now you know why I need your help,” Sybil said. “If you can tell me about some of the chemicals—what kind of thing they’re normally used for—we might unravel the whole mystery.”
“Possibly,” Dr Wainwright said. “So, what are they?”
Sybil put on her glasses.
“I’ve told you about the phosphorus oxychloride: there were six tons of that. Then there were one hundred tons of thionyl chloride, two tons of potassium hydrogen fluoride, twenty tons of sodium cyanide, five tons of hydrogen fluoride, ten tons of phosphor, and one hundred and fifty tons of isopropyl alcohol. What do you think?”
Dr Wainwright rested her chin on her hands and puckered her lips.
“They’re precursors,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“Precursors are simple base chemicals, used as the building blocks for making complex products. There are heaps of them, and they’re used in thousands of different processes.”
“I see.”
“And that’s the problem,” Dr Wainwright continued. “These chemicals could be used for just about anything.”
“Pesticides?” Sybil said. “That’s what it said on the Turkish shipping agent’s note.”
“It’s possible, I suppose. To be honest, Sybil, I don’t know anything about farming. There are some friends… but no, they’re all organic farmers, so they wouldn’t know either.”
“Oh dear,” Sybil sighed. “Just when I thought I was getting somewhere.”
“Don’t despair,” Dr Wainwright said. “That combination does look a teeny-weeny bit familiar, and there is an old colleague who can check it for me. He’s a charming fellow called Heinz Erler, who used to work at my university. You’ll love him.”
“I’m sure,” Sybil said drily. “And he might be able to tell us how these—these precursors were going to be used?”
“Perhaps,” Dr Wainwright said. “He’s worked in lots of different branches of chemistry, and he’s got a mind like a library.”
“Very well. Let’s ask him.”
“Will do, Sybil. Now, have I told you about my latest book? It’s a critique of Nostradamus’ prophecies, and I’ve written it from a Zen viewpoint. You’d love it.”
Chapter Thirty-five
COLONEL KYLE banged hard on the Laird’s front door.
“Fergus Buchanan,” he called.
There was no reply. The colonel banged harder and raised his voice.
“Fergus Buchanan! Come forth!”
But the Laird did not come forth. Colonel Kyle began to kick the door, but to no avail. It was a stout, oaken door, and the colonel’s shoes had little effect upon it. More importantly, they had no effect on the Laird, who was clearly not at home.
“Fergus Buchanan!” Colonel Kyle bawled. “Come unto me!”
The front door of the adjoining house opened, and a little old lady popped her head out.
“Good morning,” she said brightly. “Are you looking for Mr Buchanan? I think he’s with Mr Ogden and the others.”
“Ogden?”
“Yes, Clive Ogden. They usually go to Mr Croft’s house.”
“Mr Croft,” the colonel repeated thoughtfully.
These names were new to him, but they were clearly of significance.
“They’re all good friends,” the old lady said. “They seem to do everything together, nowadays. Quite inseparable, really.”
She smiled wistfully.
“That Mr Ogden’s such a card,” she giggled. “Always making jokes. Mr Beauchamp’s nice, too. He used to be in antiques. In fact, they’ll all very nice.”
“As it says in the psalm, ‘they are all alike depraved,’” Colonel Kyle replied. “‘There is none that does good, no, not one.’”
“Well, you’re entitled to your opinion,” the old lady said, “but they’ve always been very polite to me. Give people a chance, I say.”
Colonel Kyle grunted. Giving people a chance was not really his style.
“Have you had a dispute with them?” the old lady asked. “Is that why you’re trying to find them?”
“The strong lion perishes for lack of prey,” Colonel Kyle explained.
“They’re very reasonable people,” the old lady said. “If you’re upset with
them about something, I’m sure they’ll be only too happy to sort it out like gentlemen.”
“Gentlemen,” Colonel Kyle sneered. “Pah.”
“If you like,” she offered, “I can give you Mr Croft’s phone number. As I say, they’re usually at his house, working on Mr Ogden’s memoirs.”
The colonel took out a pad and pencil, and gazed at her expectantly.
“One moment,” she said, and she popped indoors. A few seconds later she reappeared holding a telephone directory.
“Here you are: Godfrey Croft. Though the others call him Vicar, for some reason. A joke, I suppose. They really are a cheery lot!”
But the humour was wasted on Colonel Kyle. He wrote down the address and phone number, and gave a curt nod.
“The Lord be with you,” he said.
“Goodbye,” the old lady smiled. “I hope you sort out your problem with them. There are few disputes you can’t settle amicably, are there?”
The colonel gave another grunt, and walked away. Despite the old lady’s optimism, an amicable settlement was not on the cards. The colonel had something else in mind—something more in keeping with his taste for Old Testament cataclysms.
Chapter Thirty-six
“KEEP GOING,” urged the Laird.
“Don’t stop,” said the Vicar.
Ogden gave a muffled grunt of acknowledgment. He was giving his friends a practical demonstration of the virtues of American bubble-gum. The emission from his lips was a technicolour monstrosity, almost as big as Ogden’s head. The bubble swirled with lurid greens, reds, yellows and purples, and showed no sign of collapsing as Ogden paused to breathe in more air through his nose.
“That’s it,” said the Laird. “One more puff—oh, Lord!”
Without warning the bubble burst, and left a polychromatic mask plastered across Ogden’s features.
“Damn,” Ogden muttered, as his friends roared with laughter. “Anyway, you take my point. There isn’t a sweet-shop in London that sells anything this powerful.”
“It’s a good thing you don’t have a beard,” the Vicar observed.