Death's Bright Angel

by Janet Neel

  The two men settled down with her in their office while she explained exactly what had been in her briefcase. McLeish sat back, puzzled, after ten minutes. ‘Who could use all that material? What would they do with it?’

  ‘Well, you couldn’t do anything with it except conclude that the company is bust. But that is common ground between us and them. I was only in such a fuss because the company is still trading and I might have been responsible for pushing it into its grave before we had really decided that the only thing we could give it was a decent burial. The interim results are overdue — they are held up in order to embody some statement about banking facilities — but they won’t amaze anyone. My boss at the Department says they are already fully discounted in the market.’ Momentarily she considered McLeish under her eyelashes. ‘Is it possible that there is no connection? Could it not have been Mr Byers acting out of simple jealousy?’

  ‘Both Davidson and I are made very unhappy by the fact that he has no alibi at all.’ Francesca looked blank, then recovered.

  ‘Of course. It would have been silly, wouldn’t it? Unless he was carried away by passion.’ She contrived to make it sound like chickenpox.

  A big man, a couple of stone overweight, with long blond hair showing dark at the roots, put his head round the door. ‘John? I saw Byers drinking in the Queens at 10.30 last night. Understand you might be interested. Was that in his statement?’

  ‘No, it bloody wasn’t. Why could you not say so before?’

  ‘I’ve only just got here, I was off duty. I came as soon as I had read the log book.’

  McLeish grunted, but did not apologize and found himself receiving a minatory look from Francesca. He scowled at her as the big man withdrew.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done.’ Francesca was unmoved by the scowl. ‘Personally I think it was Mr Byers, or possibly his grandmother, and that you’ve managed to involve yourself with a completely different case. Like reading the paper too quickly so you read across two headlines.’

  ‘You’re an ungrateful lassie, you are,’ observed Davidson sharply, taking them both completely by surprise. ‘It was your wee briefcase he was worrying over, and your safety.’ His audience gazed at him dumbfounded.

  ‘I’ll arrange to talk to Byers.’ McLeish lunged masterfully to his feet and fled from the office leaving Francesca to cope, which she promptly proceeded to do.

  ‘I would have thought your boss was big enough to look after himself.’

  Davidson compressed his lips. ‘I never like to hear lasses getting at a man when he is doing his best to look after them.’

  Francesca was drawing breath to denounce comprehensively any suggestion that she could not look after herself or any six similar when McLeish’s head came round the door. ‘You’re supposed to be in a meeting, are you not?’ he said distantly to Francesca. ‘Come on then, I’ll take you.’

  They both marched out to the car, neither speaking until they were well away from the station.

  ‘Francesca.’ She turned to him enquiringly, and he kissed her cheek. She smelt of lily of the valley, he thought, distracted.

  ‘John.’ She was rather flushed but still in control. ‘Where does all this leave you? Do you really think it has to do with Britex rather than Sheena and her cohorts?’

  ‘I don’t know. At the very least I have to find out where the relevant Britex people were last night.’

  She looked at him, her eyes widening as she worked out the implications. ‘But you’ll have to tell them I made a nonsense with my briefcase.’

  McLeish who had seen this one coming for several hours said steadily that he was sorry, but yes, this was inevitable. She considered him carefully, then stared bleakly out of the windscreen, biting her lip, plainly visualizing, in detail, a series of difficult interviews. ‘You aren’t in real trouble. I mean, the case was in your brother’s car, and you knew where it was. It’s not as if you’d dropped it by a canal.’

  She considered him, with simple interest.

  ‘If I had not been mildly careless, but had done something really idiotic such as would have got me into serious trouble, I take it you would still drop me in it?’

  ‘Yes. I’m a policeman.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Am I seeing you tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, thoughtfully, still watching him. ‘I haven’t told you that James is staying with me?’

  ‘James?’ He wondered dizzily if this was yet another rival for her affections.

  ‘James Miles Brett. The boy on your tape. He is the St Joseph’s treble at the moment, as Perry was twelve years ago. He lives out of London, but he is doing two concerts, one here and one in Edinburgh with Perry. James and his mum are staying with me, Perry’s household being, as you perceive, unsuitable. Just till Friday. So you’ll probably meet him.’

  McLeish expressed temperate pleasure, and drove off reflecting that she must be leading one of the busiest lives in London, encompassing, as it appeared to, a full-time job, four brothers, at least one lover and probably others he did not know about, and now a child prodigy and its mum. A good deal of determination was going to be required to insert himself into this scenario.

  He arrived at the station to find that he and Davidson were seeing Peter Hampton at 9.30. ‘He was in London, last night, guv’nor, staying at the Glengarry — you know, that big hotel near King’s Cross. He’s coming here, said all he needed was more police at the office.’

  McLeish drank coffee and read his notes until Hampton arrived looking distinctly ruffled, the blond hair flattened and in need of a wash, and the skin sallow with tiredness. McLeish stolidly recited the facts of the attack on Sheena and the possible involvement with Britex, going out of his way to emphasize that Francesca’s briefcase had not left the car.

  ‘Probably safer there than in the American Embassy,’ Hampton observed, gulping down a second coffee, his colour coming back. ‘I may smack her bottom for her next time I see her, but she’s a good girl. I came down with her on the train from Towneley yesterday. You were going to ask where I was, weren’t you? Fair enough.’

  ‘You came down by train, not by car?’ McLeish, bristling, was aware he was sounding wooden.

  ‘Yes. I usually drive but I thought I’d come down with Fran — the Department of Industry people that is. I was picked up at King’s Cross by the chap I’d come down to see. I spent the evening with him at his house in Tottenham and he drove me back to the hotel around 11 p.m., although I didn’t particularly notice the time.’ The man had relaxed, McLeish noted, this interview was evidently causing him no trouble.

  ‘We may want to interview the man you spent the evening with.’

  ‘If you must. He wants me to come into his firm — it’s a nice little business making security equipment — and he needs an MD. He’s in his fifties and he wants to ease up a bit. Your man said the attack was around midnight? I’d left him by then and was back at the hotel.’

  ‘Would the night clerk remember you?’

  ‘He might, but I’d not put money on it. I was in bed — alone as it happens — by midnight.’ He grinned at McLeish who had just been wondering what he was going to be offered as an alibi. ‘In any case, Inspector, everything Fran had in that briefcase, I gave her. Not much sense my stealing it back.’

  McLeish silently agreed with him, and said as much to Davidson when he had seen Hampton out.

  ‘Unless he gave her something he’d not meant to. Bit pleased with himself, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he is. Good-looking bloke, though; I noticed before.’ He glanced across at Davidson to catch a very sidelong look.

  ‘He fancies his chances with the Wilson lassie.’

  McLeish grunted, and observed that Hampton probably fancied his chances with a lot of women, and on that note William Blackett was ushered in.

  ‘I don’t know what we pay these civil servants for,’ he observed sourly. ‘Stupid girl can’t even keep our papers safe.’ He listened discontentedly as McLeish pointed out that Fr
ancesca had not really lost the papers, but appeared totally unconvinced. Nor was he disposed to be helpful about his whereabouts, but finally disclosed that he had gone on from a trade dinner to a late drink with a friend.

  ‘I take it the friend will be prepared to confirm this?’ McLeish was feeling the strain of two virtually sleepless nights and sounded crisper than he had meant to. Blackett reddened.

  ‘If you have to ask them.’

  ‘Where were you having a drink?’

  ‘At a club.’

  ‘Which club?’ McLeish asked after a discouraging pause.

  ‘The Star and Garter. Beauchamp Street.’

  Behind Blackett, Davidson stirred and scraped his chair back, in signal that he knew something of the subject matter and that McLeish should persist.

  ‘You arrived at what time?’

  ‘About 11.30.’

  ‘And left when?’ Blackett fidgeted uncomfortably, and said he didn’t really know. McLeish, tired, and bored by the effort of extracting information piece by piece, let the silence go on until Blackett felt pressured into speech.

  ‘I was with a girl. An air hostess. Swedish.’ This with an unsuccessful attempt at a man-to-man approach.

  ‘Where can we contact her?’ McLeish strove to keep his voice level, and after several false starts, Blackett managed to tell them that he had the girl’s number. He produced a card which told two experienced policemen at a glance that the girl was a prostitute, no more Swedish than either of them, and could be found when they needed her.

  ‘I hope you can manage without me for a couple of days, Inspector?’ Blackett had recovered himself a little. ‘I’m going to Verbier to check on the family chalet because we’re letting it this season, or rather my father is.’

  ‘Verbier in Switzerland?’

  ‘Yes.’ Blackett confirmed, just indicating his surprise that McLeish knew where it was, and they let him go, having taken his address. Davidson went straight off to check on the girl, while McLeish considered the interview. An expensive evening, it sounded like. Whatever Britex’s problems, Blackett seemed to have a bob or so to spare.

  ‘£100 to £150 a go with that lass,’ Davidson confirmed, arriving back.

  ‘She gave you a price?’

  ‘No, no. I know another girl in the field, nae bother. Couldn’t find the lassie herself, but the story will check, won’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ McLeish agreed. ‘Do you think he does that often?’

  ‘Often enough, I’d say. He wasn’t particularly embarrassed.’

  McLeish sighed in agreement, and, deciding he could not yet decently ring the Department of Trade and Industry, plunged back into the paperwork.

  Francesca arrived at the sanctuary of her office resisting a strong desire to weep out of sheer tension and tiredness. She distracted herself by making a list, as she did every single day and assigning priorities to the items on her list, none of which related in any way to her emotional life. Soothed by this activity and the momentary illusion of control it gave her, she rang up Bill Westland’s office, since that appeared first on her list, and booked a time to see him. She was just working out how to tackle the next priority, which was to see Henry Blackshaw, when he arrived in her office. Adhering to another of her self-taught principles, that of confessing straightaway to any disasters, she told him all, including the attack on Sheena, adding that the result, netted down, was that she had not recovered her briefcase until 8 a.m. Henry, who knew enough of the background to provide a sub-text, was unworried by any potential complaints but appalled for her.

  ‘Go home, girl. Get some sleep. You’ll not be much use until you do.’

  She looked at him, surprised. ‘I’ve much too much to do. I’m used to working like this — good heavens, where would we all be if I couldn’t function after a late night? I have to see Bill Westland, anyway.’

  Henry decided not to allow himself to be sidetracked or embarrassed. ‘So see him quickly, and go home. I take it you managed to do what he wanted?’

  She looked at him, stone-faced, blue shadows under her eyes very clear against her general pallor, and for a moment he feared he had offended her. She suddenly relaxed, and grinned at him, maliciously amused and pleased with herself in an entirely feminine way. ‘Yes, I did. I had a brilliant idea — no, don’t ask, I couldn’t possibly tell you – and moreover one which will by-pass that useless egocentric twit in our Embassy in Washington. He’ll have to agree, and he’ll know it comes from me. It’ll all happen about lunch-time when they get up over there.’

  ‘Not a forgiving nature, Fran?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Forgiving simply encourages people to commit further atrocities. As it is, that particular ornament of the FCO will think twice about trying to cross me up again.’

  Henry contemplated with interest this new vision of a Civil Service red in tooth and claw, and thought that Francesca was in this, as in many other ways, wholly unfeminine. Most women in his experience preferred to believe that the world was just and the people in it well intentioned. Francesca, on the other hand, had an eye like a knife for equivocation or deception. He offered her this view, and she smiled on him kindly.

  ‘You can’t have four brothers without knowing that men function on getting one up on the next chap. Also, I am the eldest child of a widow, and you learn a good deal about being dumped on.’ She made this point without any discernible trace of self pity, merely as a comment. ‘So you see, I try to get my retaliation in first, as the rugger players say.’

  She returned, definitively, to her list, as Henry, father of three indulged young, sat opposite, appalled by this bleak vision of the world, but understanding that he had no experience that would enable him to contradict it. It explained, he thought sadly, both her success and the difficulties she made for herself. He was wondering how to communicate something of this when the phone rang, and he listened as she agreed to a meeting at lunch-time.

  ‘The Aquarius Choir — what is it, a Civil Service choir?’ he said, incredulously. ‘Come on, Fran, you need not do that today.’

  ‘Yes, I do have to. We’ve got a problem.’

  He waited, but she showed no sign of being willing to expand. ‘Is it a good choir?’

  ‘It is quite a small choir, and it contains many older people who have sung with it for many years.’

  Henry, who sang in the excellent choir of his local church in Huddersfield, had no difficulty with this succinct description.

  ‘Then why are you in it?’

  ‘Because there was some feeling that not enough interest was being taken by the Department’s fast stream. I mean, in its heyday Deputy Secretaries and the like used to sing in it. So I volunteered. It’s no trouble for me, I’ve sung in a Messiah every Christmas and Easter since I was about ten.’

  ‘Were you head girl of your school by any chance?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’ She looked at him suspiciously, and he laughed.

  ‘Francesca, will you please go home? Or I’ll buy you a proper lunch.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, driven to the wall. ‘The thing is, there is a fuss. Perry is due to be the tenor soloist, and some of the older and sillier ladies — of both sexes — have got in a state about the publicity. Perry is only doing it for me, and will duck out in a flash if he can. I know exactly how to cope, but I have to be there or it will all be a shambles.’ She was near to tears, and Henry yielded promptly, bidding her come to his office and tell him about Britex when she had dealt with Bill Westland.

  Twenty minutes later he had Rajiv, Martin Bailey and Francesca all drinking coffee in his office.

  ‘I’ve had a phone call from my American friends,’ he began briskly. ‘The offer to buy Britex’s household-textiles business is not going to go forward.’

  ‘Oh, Lord. Did they get cold feet again?’

  ‘No, Rajiv, I did. Look, think about it. What they wanted to do was to buy the business and move the manufacturing to that factory of theirs in Birmingham. Now that would di
g Britex out of a financial hole in the short term, but they’d then be left with a factory twothirds empty and nowhere to lay off the overheads. They’d have to make another load of people redundant, and in a year’s time they’ll be in a hole again because the overheads are too high.’

  ‘So you suggested that your Americans close their Birmingham factory and move that business into Britex’s factory instead?’

  ‘Well done, girl. But then what happens? How do they and Britex manage to run production lines side by side?’

  ‘There are two buildings — I mean, Britex could keep one?’

  ‘I thought I had a better idea. My American friends could buy the whole company, with a slug of assistance from HMG. They would be a much better bet in the long term than the people running the company right now.’

  ‘But isn’t Peter Hampton quite good?’ Francesca was looking worried and distressed.

  ‘Well, lass, who has presided over the company’s decline? They told me when I came here that we were in the job-preservation business, and that didn’t mean management jobs if management had effed it up.’

  Martin Bailey observed that the Americans would surely not be prepared to buy the company, they’d only want to buy the assets, and that meant a receivership. Henry nodded, in confirmation of a point that seemed obvious to him, but Francesca and Rajiv looked at each other. Henry swept on, ignoring them. ‘So the Americans are flying over later today, we meet the Britex directors tomorrow in Yorkshire — they are all there for the funeral of that poor chap who got mugged — and we stay the night and go round the factory with the Americans in the morning.’

  ‘Ministers!’ said Rajiv and Francesca, in unison. ‘Henry, we have to consult.’

  Rajiv as senior man got his breath back first. ‘Henry, we do have procedures. We ought to go to the committee, and ask them to consider this as a proposal before we go rushing off.’

  ‘It isn’t a proposal before the Americans have decided whether they are interested.’ Henry pointed out. ‘What can we go to the committee with? I’m not prepared to recommend any rescue package for Britex with its present debts and its present management, so what is the committee going to do? Tell me I’m wrong?’