“He’s good, you know,” Peter said.
But Frances spoke to him with more firmness than I’d expected, because her eyes had been filled with mischief. “Be quiet, Peter. Go on, dad.”
“What’s this?” said Ian suspiciously. “Interest from the offspring? Whatever are we coming to!” But his suspicion arose from the tone of her voice, and clearly the two younger normally sided against him, and probably ribbed him unmercifully.
“The loading bay,” he went on, smiling at me, “is big enough to take a trailer with the door lowered. It’s sunk so that the trailer would be level with the floor. They could load it in peace and quiet, and only raise the door when they had to back up the tractor unit, and hook it on. That’s when the danger would arise.”
He chased a piece of bread round his plate with a fork, keeping his eyes on it. “That’s when the guard at No. 3 gate might have spotted something. They’d have to pinch a tractor unit from the motor pool, and back it up, raise the roller door ... That would be about the time he died. Say one o’clock, give or take half an hour, I’m told.”
Peter wasn’t saying anything. He was relaxed, his chair back, one knee against the edge of the kitchen table, a gentle smile on his face. Frances was flipping crumbs from her lap.
“Peter,” said her father, “you wouldn’t, perhaps, have an alibi for twelve-thirty to one-thirty?”
He said it quite casually, and clearly Peter had expected it. But something — perhaps the fact that Ian had equated the alibi to the murder and not to the robbery — caused Peter to narrow his eyes. Frances glanced quickly from one to the other.
“Now dad ... ”
“But has he?”
“Of course,” said Peter softly.
Ian smiled. “You frightened me then. I thought for one moment you were going to say no. Like to tell me what it is?”
“Well ... no, I wouldn’t.”
Ian seemed slightly put-out. “I’m not going to press you.”
“I’m not sure you’d dare,” said Peter. He smiled at me. I thought he was appealing to me, or apologising, but I was completely lost.
“Dare?” Ian pushed back his plate. His eyes were hard and cold.
“Will you take my word for it?” asked Peter blandly.
Ian gave a snort of pure disgust. “Your word?”
But Peter was quite calm. “You know exactly how to treat my word.”
Then Ian sat back and laughed. I thought there was a hint of relief in it, but outwardly it was a savage laugh. It seemed to dispose of alibis, though, because he reverted to the robbery.
“But how,” he said, “did they get it out of the factory grounds? That’s the most important aspect of the whole matter.”
I thought Frances gave a little sigh of relief, but I was too busy thinking that he was wrong there. It was not the most important aspect, as I saw it. But Ian was launched again.
“Seven wide-open gateways, and they didn’t dare to use one of them, because if they failed to stop and check-out, there’d be a hue and cry straightaway, and then they’d have no time to get clear. And don’t forget they wouldn’t be able to move fast with a load like thirty-seven tons. So ... if the seven open gateways are excluded, that leaves gate No. 3. The locked one. The one the dead guard came from.”
“Well then,” said Peter.
“But it’s still locked,” said Ian complacently. “And the key’s missing. It’s not on the dead guard, and it’s not on its hook in the guard hut.”
“Well then,” said Peter again.
“But is it well? Eh?” Ian was enjoying it. “They’d killed the guard. There was no reason why they shouldn’t open his gate with his key and drive straight out. But it so happens that gate No. 3 had no key-hole outside, because there would be no need for one. But, as I say, it’s still locked. Which leaves me wondering why they’d trouble to lock it after them — and take the key away. Why, especially, when it’d mean somebody having to climb the gate or the fence in order to lock it from the inside? That key is missing. I believe they intended to use that gate, but somehow the guard disposed of the key, and therefore they couldn’t get it open. Therefore ... how did they get a loaded trailer wagon out of the factory grounds?”
Then, smiling complacently as though he already knew the answer, he got to his feet and went for his bath. Frances and Peter relapsed into small-talk, in view of my presence, so I asked whether I might use the phone.
I had to let David know where I was and why I was staying. I knew he was busy at that time, setting up the partnership with George Coe in their joint venture as a confidential enquiry agency, but, busy or not, I assumed he would have missed me. He had.
“What the devil’s happening, Elsa?”
I told him, keeping it short, but with the relevant details.
“You’d better come home,” he decided. “It doesn’t sound healthy. This is a gang thing.”
But I’d detected Goodliffe’s panic, and had put a cause to it. The company had not been doing well. This incident could hammer a nail in the lid. Besides, Goodliffe owed me an apology.
“It’s my investment, David,” I protested.
It was not the correct thing to say to him. David is splendidly old-fashioned, and had never taken kindly to the fact that the bulk of our income is mine. But what could he expect from his new partnership? Most of what he’d achieved on his own had been bruises. Thoughtlessly, I said so.
“Elsa,” he said, and there was tight excitement in his voice, “we’ve just landed our first joint assignment.”
“And is there any money in it?”
“Well ... no, I suppose not. But Elsa — ”
“Because I could do with your help here.”
“It’s just a gang affair,” he said, dismissing it. “A police job. Nothing in it for me.”
“But you’re missing the main point,” I said, annoyed by his pomposity. “Everybody is. Why did they dip him in the paint at all, David?”
“These people aren’t exactly logical, you know.”
“And why did they wipe his nose clean?”
A pause. “Symbolic, Elsa. Keep his nose clean. You know. It means: Keep out of it.”
“He was already out of it, David. He was dead by the time they lifted him out of the paint.”
Another pause. David was irritated. He hated to become intrigued when he couldn’t spare the time. “Leave it, love, and come home.”
“I can’t.”
“This case we’ve got ... ” His voice shook with enthusiasm. “It’s the first time I’ve come across it. A classic situation. A locked room theme.”
I sighed. Nothing was going to prise him from something like that. “I’ll keep in touch, then, David. There’s the ransom to raise ... ”
“Ransom?”
“On the steel.”
I nearly had him then. I could almost hear his mind racing. “Then keep out of it, Elsa. Promise me. These people can get rough.”
I promised, but I must admit without sincerity, because he hadn’t offered to help when I needed him.
“We’ll clear it up quickly this end,” he said with confidence, and then we hung up.
The abrupt termination of my contact with David caught me unawares. I had been only vaguely aware of my aloneness, but now, suddenly, I was desperately lonely in a world I did not understand. I wanted nothing more than to climb in my car and drive away from it all. But I had a feeling I was being deliberately moved aside from the central problem, even by Ian. He came downstairs fresh and vigorous from his bath, and made no mention of taking me along with him as he headed for the door. I was being sidetracked into an emotional situation, something considered more suitable to a woman. I was clearly expected to do something about this business between a policeman’s daughter and a man she said was a crook.
Not for me, thank you. I enquired the way, and drove myself back to the factory.
Now it was daytime and all shifts were operating, with a din and a throb of activity t
hat shook the district. I went directly to the Managing Director’s office, and once again had to ignore the feeling that I was unwanted. I even had to over-awe his PA to get to McIntyre.
Goodliffe was in with the boss. They looked at me blankly.
“The apology,” I prompted.
Goodliffe looked relieved. It seemed so little to concede in order to see the back of me. He delivered it with a fair imitation of a gentleman. I accepted it with the same sincerity. But I did not leave.
“Why,” I asked, “is there talk of paying a ransom worth more than the steel itself?”
There was undisguised hostility from Goodliffe, who obviously thought it was none of my business. But I stood my ground, and McIntyre, remembering the size of my share-holding, took over. He’s like a great, shaggy teddy bear, all grumbling confidence and spurious friendliness. McIntyre would cut your throat, with a charming smile. Now he decided exactly how to handle me. He put his arm round my shoulders and spoke to me as to a backward child.
“It’s like this Mrs. Mallin. The steel comes from Sweden. It’s made as strip, a foot wide, and it’s cut into lengths. There’s no mill in this country producing strip that thickness, only plate, and we can’t get plate cut down to our size. And we can’t — just can’t — get any replacement from Sweden under three months. And this is an absolutely critical order. British Heavy Vehicles want 600 Axle cases. That takes 1200 flats, as we call them. And they want them in a fortnight. We’ve dropped everything for this order, and we’ve got the whole factory set-up for it. BHV have got their factory line-up all geared to it. To them, it’s a £10m order for Iran. Big money. Ten thousand pounds is peanuts, compared. The value, to us, of this order is £60,000. Plus prestige and reputation.”
He looked across to Goodliffe, and gave one of those smiles which said: now we’ll get rid of her.
“And is this generally known?” I asked. It did seem to me that our crooks had struck at a very opportune moment for them.
The arm was withdrawn from my shoulders. It flapped with impatience against his thigh. “Of course not. Sections of the executive staff would know ... ”
“Then there’s been a leak.”
They looked at each other, then they looked at me. Goodliffe seemed to be seized with some idea so intense that it shook him.
This was a different Goodliffe from the one I’d last seen. He had had time to think, and his attitude had changed.
“You see Mac!” he cried. “It bears out what I said.”
“Now come on ... ” McIntyre was growling. “Mrs. Mallin isn’t interested in your obsession about computers.”
“I know nothing about them,” I admitted.
Goodliffe almost snatched my hand in his eagerness. “Then you can’t know how they can catch hold of every little detail of management, and sift it ... twist it, and calmly take charge.”
“She doesn’t want to know.” McIntyre was shouting. “You’ve got to accept the things and work with them.”
“For years,” Goodliffe moaned, “we did it manually. We knew what was what. We were in touch, But now — God help us — the bloody machine controls us. It tells us what to do ... ”
“That’s enough, Harry,” said McIntyre severely.
Goodliffe was close to weeping. “It tells us what we’ve got, and we can’t argue. What we need and when. What to do with it. It tells us that the damned steel was for delivery yesterday — but where is it?”
“It’s been stolen!” Then McIntyre took a grip on himself, and with a great effort drew himself into his warm imitation of a bundle of sympathy. “Take it easy, now, there’s a good chap. If your computer says — ”
“But was it delivered? Eh? Can you prove it? Can anybody say it actually arrived?”
McIntyre sighed. “Arrived or not, it’s not there now. Do try to get it into your head, Harry.”
But it took a further five minutes to calm Goodliffe to a muttering state of doubt.
I didn’t know what to make of this, so I did not comment. I thought I ought to find out, though, so when Goodliffe left I tagged along. He kept glancing at me, but I clung to his shoulder — figuratively, of course.
This sort of thing is tricky and embarrassing, and when we got to his car it became a battle of wills. I might have known he was too important to walk through the grounds, and it was all of half a mile to his factory, so he was using his car. He got in behind the wheel. I stood at the passenger’s door. He had to balance the rudeness of simply driving away against the abdication of allowing me in. We stared at each other, then he reached over and opened the door.
“Really, it’s no place for a woman,” he said impatiently.
During the trip to his office, I became aware of what Ian Carefree had had in mind. He knew where the steel had gone, he had said. Obviously, he considered it had gone nowhere. Police were swarming around the factory grounds. Ian was conducting a search, assuming that the crooks, foiled by the locked gate at No. 3, had hidden the steel somewhere within the perimeter.
“The man’s stupid,” said Goodliffe in irritation. “Does he think anybody could just hide it? Thirty-seven tons of it!”
“Then what’s happened to it?”
“Ah!” He glanced sideways at me. “You heard what I said in there.”
We were approaching the Heavy Axle Case building from the despatch end, and I saw that it was lower there. That end of the factory there were no presses to demand a high reach, so that the roof was no higher than a normal house, with fat chimneys sticking up from it, guarded from the rain by conical steel hats. They weren’t chimneys in the normal sense of the word, but the outlets for the fume extractors, which plunged underground from the welding bays, before reaching up for the open air. But there were no fumes to be extracted that day. Heavy Axle Case was the only factory in the complex to stand-down.
“You’ve changed your mind,” I said. “Yesterday you were talking about getting it back. Now you say it hadn’t even arrived.”
He was driving all round the building. There was no steam from any of the vents.
“Palfrey and Newman,” he said, nodding. He now seemed much more calm, even pleased with himself. “Palfrey’s the Steel Expeditor, and Newman’s the Stock Controller. They could have worked it together. They’re the ones who feed the information to the computer. We only think the steel’s arrived, Mrs. Mallin, because the computer’s taken it into stock. But what if the print-out’s wrong? Faked!” Suddenly I was his friend for life. I was the naive innocent on whom he could exercise his theory. “Palfrey and Newman could have done it. I’ve never thought they could be trusted. They’re too intelligent.”
We drew up outside the Production Control offices. All seemed quiet.
“I don’t want to seem difficult,” I said. “But how does it help? You still haven’t got the steel.”
He got out of his car, snarling. Already he was assuming his habitual attitude at the office. “Then I don’t see why we should spend £10,000 to be told it wasn’t stolen at all, because we never had it in the first place.”
A fake robbery? A cover for the clever use of the computer? I followed him in a daze. He put his head in the main office.
These were people I had not seen before, the working staff, five middle-aged to elderly men, who were sitting round a table playing cards.
“Palfrey!” Goodliffe shouted. “I want you in my office. Newman, I want the latest print-out. And I want it now.”
He smiled at me. “I will see you, perhaps later Mrs. Mallin.” He went to his office.
The one called Palfrey looked at the one called Newman.
“My God, he’s at it again.”
4
Bill Rogers thought it was very funny. But then, I soon realised, he thought all the foibles of humanity were vastly amusing.
“Otherwise,” he explained, “you’d go barmy. Wouldn’t you?”
Rogers was what they called a Production Control clerk. He was one of the five I had seen playing cards, a
nd as the factory was on stop he had no work to do. He was therefore appointed — by himself it seemed — to be my guide and protector for the morning. I thought at first he was simply using the opportunity in order to withdraw from the pitched battle that raged in the office, as Goodliffe tore sheets from the computer print-out, and Palfrey and Newman gradually worked themselves into an exhausted apathy. But later I realised that Rogers was gently and slyly bringing my attention to the fact that I was not wanted there, even by the staff.
It was a most terrible day. Rogers took me everywhere. Every oily and smelly machine had to be inspected and every operation explained. My head was reeling. And scattered throughout the factory were the two hundred or so operators, all sitting in their selected corners doing crosswords, and all ready to be entertained by the presence of a woman.
“They never see a woman on the shop floor,” Rogers explained, over and over, at first slightly embarrassed, and later more meaningly. I was beginning to get his point. From the remarks and wolf whistles, I gathered they rarely saw a woman anywhere else, either.
He showed me the Lasco Press, which would have been pressing the blanks, if they had been available.
“And did they arrive?” I asked.
“Of course, Goodliffe’s a fool. Always was. I saw it stacked there, yesterday lunchtime. Saw it myself. But Goodliffe’s hypnotised by computers.”
“Then why don’t you tell him you’ve seen it, and put him out of his misery?”
He looked at me with dignity. “Why should I? I’m not programmed to tell Goodliffe about his stock.”
He took me down towards gate No. 3, the canal on our left. I was interested in the solid steel gates. The canal was layered with algae, with little islands of silted grass resting on its surface.
Inside his hut the replacement guard was asleep in his chair.
“Better not wake him,” said Rogers.
“Because it’s not programmed?”
He looked at me seriously. “The poor devils are having to double-up on shifts. Two dead in one day.”
A Dip Into Murder (David Mallin Detective series Book 10) Page 3