Last Writes

by Catherine Aird

  ‘And the beauty of his method, whatever it is,’ said Henry, ‘is that he doesn’t even need to know who he is signalling to.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Briggs.

  Henry Tyler cast his gaze round the pond. It was evidently a popular place in the middle of the afternoon. There were old men and women settled on the benches and several young women with prams strolling up and down in the early sunshine. The faces of one or two of those sitting on the benches were hidden behind newspapers and in the middle of one of the beds of tulips a gardener was engaged in weeding in a very desultory fashion. The desultoriness could have come from natural laziness or from keeping a keen eye on the man on the bench beside the grotto: Henry was unable to decide which. Unless he was very much mistaken, very soon able-bodied men would not be weeding flowerbeds but engaged on more active service elsewhere.

  ‘Do be careful where you look,’ urged Briggs. ‘Remember, it’s an old saying that if you can see them, then they can see you.’

  Henry Tyler sighed. One of Whitehall’s greatest fears at the present time was that the next war was going to be fought on the maxims of the last. He contented himself with saying ‘Quite so,’ and instead watched one child – a boy – who had caught Henry’s eye. He was playing with a toy boat that was seemingly powered by a battery as it crossed the pond.

  ‘Wireless?’ he murmured to the man at his side, prompted by the sight.

  ‘We can’t pick up any signal.’

  ‘Field telephone?’

  ‘No wires in sight,’ said Briggs, ‘and his ordinary telephone’s had a tap on it ever since Fritz moved here. Presumably he came to keep an eye on the new tank factory at Luston, to say nothing of the old aerodrome that’s being refurbished with the speed of light. Oh, and the harbour over at Kinnisport.’

  ‘Heliograph?’ said Henry, who was renowned for sticking to the point at issue.

  ‘In our weather?’

  ‘We’re not sufficiently grateful for the vagaries of the English climate,’ conceded Henry.

  ‘I don’t think sunshine would be quite reliable enough,’ said Briggs seriously, ‘and anyway it would be relatively easy to spot and whatever this chap is doing it isn’t obvious except for the arm movements. Look at him now – putting a hand to his ear.’

  ‘As far as we can make out,’ advanced Henry carefully, ‘he’s sending blocks of numbers.’

  ‘Well, he would be, wouldn’t he?’ said Briggs. ‘Only we don’t know the code.’

  ‘If we knew the numbers we might be able to work that out but what we really want to know is how he’s getting them across to his contact,’ persisted Henry, mindful of his obligations to one of the great offices of state.

  ‘Which means you don’t want him caught just yet?’ deduced Briggs.

  ‘Not until we know his working methods,’ said Henry, adding lightly, ‘After all, we might like to use them ourselves. You never know, do you?’

  ‘Never,’ said Charles Briggs, conspicuously emptying the last of his paper bag of bread over the water and preparing to walk away. He gave a loud whistle to his dog. ‘Come along, Raffles. Good boy.’ As the dog’s tail waved excitedly he added, ‘Shall I see you tomorrow, then?’

  ‘Not tomorrow,’ said Henry. ‘Wouldn’t do to be seen together too often. Besides, I’ve got to be somewhere else tomorrow. Let’s say the day after.’

  Henry lingered quite a while after Briggs had gone, from time to time tossing a handful of bread in the direction of a pair of ruddy ducks and glancing only once towards the grotto. The man there was definitely moving his arms about in a curious way. It was quite impossible to see which of the many people who were also about could be taking notes of what the movements meant.

  ‘Casting his bread on the waters’ would be the only way in which he would be properly able to describe his day’s work to his superiors when he made his report that night.

  The next day was different.

  ‘Good to have you with us,’ said Tim Witherington as they set out for the Berebury Races. ‘Wen needs restraining once she’s seen the jockeys.’

  ‘I thought it was form that mattered,’ said Henry.

  ‘And the horses,’ protested Wendy.

  ‘That’s true,’ agreed her husband promptly. ‘If it’s a chestnut, she backs it.’

  ‘What about the going?’ enquired Henry. Just now the expression ‘hard going’ could be applied to places other than racecourses but he didn’t say so. Days such as these must be enjoyed, indeed relished, come what may, because they might not come again for a very long time. If ever, he added to himself, a realist to the core. ‘Surely the going matters, too?’

  ‘It does,’ said his brother-in-law jovially, ‘but I swear Wen really goes by what the jockeys are wearing.’

  ‘The colours are so lovely,’ said Wendy Witherington dreamily. ‘And the horses are beautiful always.’

  ‘There – what did I say?’ said Tim. ‘That’s women for you.’

  ‘Time will tell,’ said Henry. ‘Now, which horse are you two going to put your shirts on in the first race?’

  ‘That’s the Perry Plate,’ said his sister, consulting her race card. ‘Me, I’m backing St Meast.’

  ‘I like the look of Almstone,’ said Tim Witherington. ‘She ran well in her last race even though it was on ground that might have been too firm for her.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ promised Henry. Firm ground was something they didn’t have at the Foreign Office just now. In the event he plumped for a horse called Staple St James.

  ‘You’ll get long odds,’ said Tom. ‘She’s never won much.’

  ‘You’ve got to take some risks in this life,’ he said idly, his mind still on the spy in the park.

  ‘They’re off,’ said Wendy, jumping up and down in excitement. ‘Oh, come on, do, St Meast.’

  ‘It’s no good, Wen, Almstone’s way ahead,’ said her husband smugly a few moments later. ‘I’ll just go and collect my winnings from Honest Joe over there.’

  But Wendy Witherington had already turned her attention to the next race. ‘Now, Henry, who do you think’s going to win the Coronation Stakes?’

  ‘Queen Elizabeth,’ said Henry absently.

  ‘I meant which horse, you silly,’ she said affectionately, slipping her arm into his.

  He backed the loser in that race, too.

  ‘It’s the Ornum Cup next,’ said Wendy, peering at the owner’s box, ‘but I can’t see the Duke anywhere.’ She looked disappointed. ‘The Duchess is there but he always comes, too. Always.’

  Her husband gave a little cough. ‘I heard that he was with his regiment,’ he said quietly.

  Wendy looked dismayed. ‘Already?’

  ‘Already,’ said Tim Witherington. ‘Now, who are you backing in the Jubilee Stakes?’

  ‘Ryrie,’ said Wendy. ‘She looks a good goer and I’ve backed her at six to four. And you, Henry?’

  ‘Cullingoak,’ said Henry firmly.

  ‘She’s still a hundred to one,’ said Tim.

  ‘I have a weakness for outsiders,’ said Henry truthfully. It was the insiders who were giving him trouble at the Foreign Office just now.

  ‘Cullingoak’s still running at a hundred to one,’ said Tim, when he got back from the bookmaker. ‘No hope, there, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Henry, suddenly alert. ‘I say, Tim, lend me your binoculars for a moment, will you?’

  His brother-in-law handed them over with a laugh. ‘Horses don’t run any faster when you’re watching them, you know.’

  Henry didn’t answer. He was concentrating his gaze on something that suddenly seemed familiar. There was a man standing beside Tim’s bookmaker who was making gestures that he had seen before: odd movements of hand to shoulder. This man, too, had his arm bent at the elbow and was touching his hat and shoulder in rapid succession.

  ‘You’re meant to be watching the race, old boy,’ said Tim, nudging him, ‘not the tic-tac men.’

 
‘So I am,’ said Henry amiably. ‘They’re transmitting sets of numbers to other bookies, aren’t they?’

  Tom nodded. ‘Only we don’t know which ones. The bookies do, of course.’

  ‘Of course. What you might call a racing certainty.’ Henry handed Tim’s binoculars back to him. ‘I’m just off to make a telephone call but I’ll be back in time for the Berebury Handicap.’

  BENCHMARK

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan.

  ‘It’s true, sir,’ insisted Detective Constable Crosby.

  ‘Tell me again what they said,’ commanded Sloan.

  ‘That they were thinking,’ said the detective constable.

  ‘That all?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘No, I’m not, sir,’ said Detective Constable Crosby earnestly.

  ‘Then, Crosby, you might as well file the report under T for “Tall Order”.’

  ‘But that’s what they said,’ persisted the young constable.

  ‘That they were still thinking.’

  ‘Both of them?’

  ‘Both of them. Larky Nolson and Melvin Boness said exactly the same thing to me one after the other.’

  Sloan said scornfully, ‘Just that they were still thinking and it was no use interviewing either of them about last night’s job at Bellamy’s warehouse just yet?’

  ‘That’s right, sir, because they said they weren’t going to say anything yet even if we tried to get them to all day.’

  ‘I’m the one who decides when they’re interviewed and for how long,’ said Sloan, mindful of a whole raft of new requirements in connection with taking suspects into custody. ‘And I’m certainly not going to try to all day. I’ve got better things to do.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Besides,’ he added with some asperity, ‘as you ought to know very well by now, Crosby, there are various procedures specifically designed to prevent the police trying to get anyone who is detained saying anything they don’t want to. And I don’t only mean torture,’ he added, since this did seem to have been on the agenda of some less enlightened regimes.

  ‘Yes, sir, I know that and so do they.’

  ‘I’ll bet they do.’ Some criminals were better versed in police procedure than some policemen and Sloan for one knew that only too well. ‘So where do we go from here? And, Crosby, I must remind you again that I haven’t got all day.’

  ‘I think, sir, what they mean is that they’re not going to be saying anything at all to us about the raid on Bellamy’s warehouse and what’s happened to what they took – I mean,’ the constable hastily amended this in the interests of political correctness, ‘to what is said to have been taken from there – until they’ve finished thinking.’

  ‘Finished!’ snorted Sloan. ‘They’ve never even started thinking. Not that pair.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘If they had they wouldn’t be in the police station in the first instance.’

  ‘No, sir – I mean, yes, sir.’

  ‘And I should also point out to you that if either of them could think any further then they wouldn’t have been caught in such potentially compromising circumstances as they were at two o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Mind you, Crosby, on mature reflection, perhaps we should remember that stupid criminals are easier to catch than clever ones.’ A clever villain was one of the reasons why Detective Inspector Sloan had other things to do that day; investigating transactional fraud not being for amateurs.

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s very true.’

  ‘Anyway, why on earth should they ever think that we hadn’t noticed the aforementioned circumstances at the break-in at Bellamy’s last night? And the bolt-croppers they had with them and left behind them, come to that. What do they think we are? Blind?’

  ‘No, sir. Actually “Going equipped” is one of the charges and “After the hours of darkness” is mentioned.’

  ‘I trust,’ growled Sloan, ‘that you’ve made quite sure that they’re being kept well apart.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. They’re definitely out of the hearing of each other.’

  ‘And there’s no way they can play games such as tapping the water pipes between cells with Morse code or whatever? Or, let us be realistic, mobile phones?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Crosby hesitated. ‘But I think if they hadn’t been separated they’d have decided between them what to say by now.’

  ‘So do I, Crosby, so do I.’ Inspector Sloan sighed. ‘Then all I can say is that you’d better see that they don’t get their act together while I have a word with him upstairs.’

  Unfortunately him upstairs – actually his superior officer, Superintendent Leeyes – was not in a good mood. When appealed to for extra time he was more unbending than many a cricket umpire.

  ‘I take it, Sloan, that applying for permission for extending their detention for further questioning is your idea of humour. Those two villains wouldn’t begin to know how to think however long you gave them. Neither of them.’

  ‘Very possibly, sir. And I can’t even say in their favour that they’re exactly cooperating with us either,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan gloomily. Doctors, he knew, liked cooperative and optimistic patients. Policemen were happy to settle for cooperative interviewees, optimism not usually being called for in the circumstances.

  ‘Cooperate with you, Sloan? Why on earth should they?’ Leeyes sniffed. ‘Remember, it’s not incumbent on anyone who has been arrested to cooperate with the police. You should know that by now, man.’

  ‘No, sir, but there can be advantages for the accused in doing so.’ He frowned. ‘Besides, there’s something else. His present behaviour makes quite a change for Larky Nolson and that’s something I can’t understand. He usually croaks when he’s been nicked, does our Larky. And pretty pronto, come to that. Something must be niggling him or else Melvin Boness has got some sort of hold over him.’

  ‘Nothing to stop Larky rowing for the shore this time round if he wants to,’ snorted Leeyes. The superintendent always liked an early admission of guilt, preferably accompanied by the prompt implication of any accomplices. It saved on the paperwork.

  ‘I’m not so sure about that, sir,’ said Sloan.

  ‘What do you mean, Sloan? There’s nothing stopping him admitting it, is there? It’s a free country, isn’t it? He can confess if he wants to.’

  Since Superintendent Leeyes was in the habit of averring to all and sundry that it wasn’t a free country any more, Sloan was careful what he said. ‘Well, sir, if Larky were to confess and Melvin Boness kept his mouth shut, Larky’d probably get off and Boness’d get – what would you say – three years?’

  ‘You never can tell with our Bench,’ prevaricated Leeyes. ‘That’s the trouble with Hetty.’

  Miss Henrietta Meadows was the chairman of the Berebury Bench of Magistrates and a stickler for the book.

  ‘But …’ began Sloan.

  ‘Oh, all right then, three years, with luck,’ agreed the superintendent. ‘With luck on our side, that is,’ he added, a man made bitter by light sentencing. ‘I suppose you could say on the other hand Larky might get three years if Melvin Boness confessed and our Larky didn’t.’

  ‘But if they both sing and split on each other …’ began Sloan.

  ‘I reckon each of ’em would get two years or thereabouts,’ pronounced the superintendent weightily. ‘The Bench being what it is and Miss Meadows being what she is.’

  ‘Exactly, sir. That’s just what I mean because the other option is for them both to stay silent.’

  ‘Ah! I get you.’ Leeyes pounced. ‘I doubt if they’d get more than a year then, not with our Hettie in the chair. She would argue that she hadn’t got enough to go on and so it wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘I daresay she would.’

  ‘She calls it being punctilious,’ went on the superintendent, carefully refraining from saying that wasn’t what he
called it.

  ‘Advised by the Clerk, of course,’ murmured Sloan.

  ‘In my experience,’ said Superintendent Leeyes loftily, ignoring this last, ‘every Bench of Magistrates that I’ve ever known always gets cold feet when there’s no defence put forward. They don’t like it. Not cricket or something,’ he said disdainfully.

  ‘It takes two to tango,’ said Sloan with seeming irrelevance. It was true all the same, though, when it came to the law. Both the prosecution and the defence had to believe in the process – even if the accused didn’t. Or the superintendent, he added piously to himself.

  ‘Given half a chance,’ growled the superintendent, misunderstanding him, ‘either of ’em would lead us a pretty dance.’

  ‘But,’ Sloan pointed out, hoping he’d got it right, ‘for each to act in the best interest of both is to run the risk of betrayal by the other.’

  ‘As I have said time and time again,’ trumpeted Leeyes, ‘there is no such thing as honour among thieves.’

  ‘No, sir – I mean, yes, sir.’

  ‘Which is why you must keep them apart, Sloan. I don’t like this idea of crime without punishment. Never have.’ Actually, given half a chance, and with capital punishment still on the Statute Book, the superintendent would doubtless have favoured the ancient and customary ruling known as Gibbet Law which didn’t trouble itself with trials.

  ‘No, sir.’ Detective Inspector Sloan drew breath and started on a different tack. ‘The interesting thing is that if they both act selfishly …’

  ‘I’ve never met an unselfish crook,’ remarked Leeyes conversationally.

  ‘… then it means that they do get some punishment but …’

  ‘Although I daresay not as much as they should have done,’ interrupted the superintendent robustly, ‘and don’t always get,’ he added, mindful of the punctilious Miss Henrietta Meadows and the local Bench.

  ‘But not as much punishment as they might have done if they hadn’t both shopped each other,’ finished Detective Inspector Sloan at last.