by HRF Keating
‘You feeling OK?’
She laughed.
‘I’m fine. Sorry, I ought to have explained first, except I was deeply caught up in something that had just come to me.’
‘Something not unconnected with the break-in at Heronsgate House?’
‘All right, yes, you can read my mind. But one of the Birchester Watchmen there told me he’d had to go to St Ozzie’s that night to have a wound to his head examined.’
‘Oh, yes? And am I to be told why it was, as you sat deeply lost in thought, you suddenly decided you, too, had to go to St Ozzie’s tonight? Or is all this some keep-a-secret police work on behalf of your Mr Brown?’
‘Well, yes, it is. I suppose it is.’
‘So you just want me to take you to St Oswald’s in pursuit of, as they say, your inquiries? And what then? Do I come and fetch you later on? Or do I urgently call Mr Brown if you’re not back within an hour? Or should I just wait outside for a few minutes?’
‘Probably that, if it’s OK with you.’
‘All right. So long as I get a bit of dinner some time tonight.’
‘I promise.’
*
In the event John had to wait for less than ten minutes. In the hospital, Harriet found at the reception desk, late in the day though it was, a bright, young, absurdly blonde girl, spangly glitter at her ear lobes, who, as soon as a warrant card had been laid in front of her and a question asked, opened her register and flipped back and forwards through its pages.
Eventually a little frown appeared between the spangly earrings.
‘There isn’t any entry for anyone coming in at that time on Tuesday night, or in the early hours of Wednesday. What did you say the name was again?’
‘Earl, Winston Earl.’
‘No, I’m certain. I’ve even checked the past three Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and no Winston Earl.’
‘Thank you. That’s all I wanted to know.’
Heading back to the car and vowing she would never again equate blondes with air-heads, Harriet felt a glow of satisfaction. Yes, there had been something fishy, very fishy, about the way the two of them, there outside the house, had tried to convince me they had done something which they had not.
The picture they had painted had been wrong. The one checkable fact in the whole rigmarole had made that crystal clear. Winston Earl had not needed hospital treatment for that bruise on the side of his face. He had not, as he had claimed, giving his blarneying mate a quick look of complicity, been so seriously hurt that he had had to go to St Oswald’s.
But why exactly had the pair of them needed to pretend he had been hurt that badly?
I’m going to have a little chat with Winston Earl.
*
As soon as, at home, they had eaten their straight-from-the-freezer into the microwave supper, she went to the phone and called the Birchester Watchmen office.
But, bad news.
‘Oh, yeah,’ the night-shift girl who answered said. ‘Yeah, we got a Winston Earl. Winny, nice bloke.’
‘I asked where I could find him now.’
‘I could look up in the book,’ came the doubtful answer.
If this girl’s a blonde, I go back on all I thought about them at St Ozzie’s.
‘Then please do that.’
‘Oh, OK. I suppose.’
‘I told you this was a police inquiry.’
‘Yeah, well, I suppose that’s all right then.’
A long silence.
Harriet thought, once or twice, that she could hear pages of ‘the book’ being turned. She sat there sighing.
Then at last came the answer.
‘Yeah. Yeah, I found it. Yeah, Winny’s out at what they call South Birchester University. Used to be the Tech, you know. My Dad went there. I think.’
‘You’re sure? You’re sure Winston Earl is on duty tonight at South Birchester University?’
‘What it says in the book.’
‘All right. Thank you. No. No, wait. Do you have a home address for him?’
‘For my Dad?’
Harriet bit back an explosive retort.
‘No. No, for Winston Earl.’
‘Oh, yes. I know that. I been to it.’
‘And it is …?’
‘Oh, you want to know? Well, it’s over in Moorfields. Just behind that pub, the Virgin an’ Vicar, went to that with Winston once. Dead sexy.’
‘The address?’
‘Oh, yes. Yeah, it’s Redwood Street. Number 14.’
At last.
*
But, under next morning’s steady rain, 14 Redwood Street proved not to be the single house the idiot girl at the Birchester Watchmen had implied. It was a tall, boot-faced, anonymous block of flats, small windows going up and up in blank rows.
Yes, if she was a blonde, definitely an air-head one.
But I must see Winston Earl. Must, if need be, wake him up from his sleep after night duty at South Birchester University, guarding all the expensive computers and machinery at the former Tech.
Ah, a bit of luck. There just visible on the other side of these smeary glass entrance doors, underneath an intercom grille, a long row of bell-buttons, names beside them, however much surrounded by scrawled graffiti of every sort, phone numbers, rude drawings, invitations to ‘Come Up for a Good Time’.
She pushed open the doors and went in.
Scan down the list. And … Yes, Winston Earl 12B. Finger pressed long and hard on the button.
And, more quickly than she expected, a good deal more quickly, a voice coming through the intercom grille.
‘Yeah. Who that?’
She had no intention of identifying herself.
‘Mr Earl, Winston Earl?’
‘Thass me. What yer want?’
‘I’d like a word. Can I come up?’
‘A word? What about?’
‘A matter of business, Mr Earl.’
‘Business. I ain’t got no business.’
‘No, I realise that Mr Earl, but I would like to speak to you about some business I have.’
Is he being a bit too wary? Am I right? Has he recognised my voice? Better keep that lift there in sight, and the stairs, or I’ll find he’s off and away. And … And doesn’t he sound somehow different from the man I remember from that conversation outside Heronsgate House? Maybe he’s just got out of bed to answer the buzzer. Throat full of phlegm. Or maybe not.
And now no voice coming from the flat above. ‘Mr Earl?’
‘What you want?’
Oh, back to the beginning. What does he think he’s going to gain this way?
All right, have to risk saying straight out who I am.
‘Mr Earl, this is Detective Superintendent Martens. We spoke at Heronsgate House on Thursday morning. I have one or two things I’d like to ask you about.’
‘Heronsgate House,’ came the thickly voiced reply.
Then silence.
Then something more.
‘Hey, man, you must be wanting Winston.’
‘Yes. Yes, I am. Winston Earl.’
‘No, you be wanting my son Winston. I’m Winston Earl. So’s he.’
Dear God, I should have remembered. West Indian families often pass down forename along with surname.
‘Yes, yes, Mr Earl, it’s your son I want to speak to, the one who works for Birchester Watchmen.’
‘He sleeping.’
‘Then will you wake him? I’m coming up.’
*
Harriet found Winston Earl, the younger, in the bedroom which, to judge by the two single beds that took up most of its space, he must share with his wifeless father. The frowsty atmosphere, almost making her clamp her mouth shut, confirmed that the Birchester Watchmen guard had, until a few moments before, been sleeping off his night awake.
Then, her suspicions of Winston and his mate made her think, wryly, that Winston had probably spent at least a part of last night with his eyes comfortably shut. The glimpse she had had the morning after the
break-in of the tossed-about duvet and head-dented pillow in the Director’s bedroom came bouncing back into her mind.
When the bell at Heronsgate House had rung some time before midnight on Tuesday, no doubt the two Birchester Watchmen had been happily asleep on the Director’s wide bed, head to tail. Didn’t I, come to think, see a pillow at the bed’s foot?
So, when she faced the young Winston Earl, slumped in stained T-shirt and creased boxer shorts on the edge of the bed in front of her, she challenged him with more than a little contempt.
‘How’s that bruise on your head today? Better than when you had to go to St Ozzie’s for it?’
Winston Earl blinked.
‘Well?’
‘’S, OK, I guess.’
‘Except that you never went near St Ozzie’s that night.’
Now the sleepy deep-brown eyes opened wide, with a look of something like plain fear.
‘I — I did. I …’
‘Don’t try and lie your way out of it now. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Winston Earl. And, let me tell you, your only way to avoid finding yourself charged with obstructing police inquiries is to tell the whole truth now. From start to finish.’
Head hanging down, eyes fixed on the blackened toenails of his feet below. Silence.
‘All right. Suppose you just answer the questions I put to you.’
A muttered ‘OK’.
‘First, where exactly were you when you were disturbed by the sound of the front-door bell?’
‘I was — Well, sort of on the bed there.’
‘Where? What bed?’
‘Director’s. We both of us were there. Big bed he got. An’ soft.’
‘All right. And, when you realised what bell it was you’d heard, you went tumbling down the stairs and opened that door without thinking. That it?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, sort of.’
‘And then what? Be careful how you answer.’
He took his time then. She could see the slow processes of his thoughts moving across his big, round, still sleep-sodden face.
‘They stuck a gun in me belly. They did do that.’
‘Oh, yes? But who was it who pushed that gun at you?’
Crunch question. At last a description, a true description? Or just another fairy tale?
‘Woman.’
‘A woman? For God’s sake …’
But, yes, she thought, if he’s telling the truth, it could be … Damn it, it could be someone from WAGI.
Except that all the top-ranking WAGI members whom Gwendoline Tritton could trust to carry out the raid — and she would have to trust them indeed — were safely at that Council meeting, miles away at The Willows.
And then she realised that burly Winston was weeping, weeping from shame. Slow tears were wetting the stubbly flesh of his cheeks.
‘Tell me all about it,’ she said encouragingly.
‘Yeah,’ he managed to get out after half a minute or so. ‘Yeah, they was women. They put it over on us, Mike an’ me. Three bloody women. Just with that one gun.’
‘They threatened to shoot one or the other of you? Unless you gave them your emergency key to the Director’s office, that it? No petrol dousing, nothing of that sort? I suppose your fly Irish friend splashed some he found somewhere on himself after he’d concocted your story.’
‘Yeah. It was Mike. Said we had to make something up or we’d be sacked, the both of us. So we — we sorta pretended we’d gone to St Ozzie’s.’
Tears still welling from his eyes.
Not the toughest of security guards, Harriet allowed herself to think. But what could you expect from cheapo Birchester Watchmen? And, if by some chance I’m right about WAGI and, after all, Maggie Quirke did learn from Christopher about the CA 534 and where it was hidden, then mightn’t she have gathered from him at some other time what inefficient people were guarding Heronsgate House.
Any more to learn from this poor blubbering fellow on the bed?
‘So what happened after you’d given that key to one of those women?’
‘Other two tied us up, didn’t they? They had that gun. What could we do? Had to let ’em.’
‘And some time after they’d all gone — Did you see if the one who went up to the Director’s office was carrying anything when she came back?’
‘Couldn’t, could I? Made us lie down, face to the wall.’
He looked up now, wiping a hand across his tear-blotched face.
‘Weren’t no good at tying, though, they weren’t. Got loose ten minutes after they ran off.’
A miniscule burst of pride.
Harriet left him, consoling himself with that.
Chapter Fifteen
Sitting in the shelter of her car outside the boot-faced Moorfields block of flats, Harriet thought over the situation that blubbery Winston’s confession had brought to light. So, the midnight raid at Heronsgate House had been the work, not of the heavies invented by Michael O’Dowd, but of a handful of women. Three vigorous and determined women who knew just what they were looking for, and just where to find it.
So how did they come to have that knowledge? Answer, almost certainly, through Christopher Alexander. He told me in that confused phone call of his that he’d let slip, as he defended himself on the mattress he shared with taunting Maggie Quirke, fully-fledged member of the Council of Women Against Genetic Interference, both the fact that Dr Lennox had kept a sample of CA 534 and where it was that he had concealed it.
And what organisation was more likely to have sent that ultimatum letter declaring that unless research into genetically modified foods was brought to an immediate end a highly destructive herbicide would be let loose? All right, in theory that could be half a dozen other militant groups. But how would any of them, even if they had the will to issue a threat like that, have got hold of that information about CA 534?
So doesn’t it come down now to surrounding the solidly respectable The Willows? To searching the whole place from top to bottom until that appallingly destructive substance is found?
But, as soon as she had formulated that question, a sharp doubt came into her mind. A surfacing submarine, ready with threatening torpedoes.
Oh, yes, on the face of it I have worked my way to the solution. Except that it doesn’t square with one very awkward fact. Fifteen of Gwendoline Tritton’s most active subordinates were at a Council meeting at The Willows, miles away from Heronsgate House, at the time of the break-in. A fact, curiously, made firmer because there were not, at midnight, sixteen members at the meeting. Aunty Beryl’s departure at 8.06 p.m. had been carefully recorded in the sacrosanct Minutes Book.
All right, when the hunt switched so decisively to Professor Wichmann I didn’t bother to check those fifteen Council members to see if, unlikely possibility that it was, that whole alibi had been cooked-up. True, Gwendoline Tritton, rigid believer that whatever she does is the best that can be done, would be well capable of dreaming up a large-scale alibi like that. But, when you look at it, such a scheme has to be as leaky as an old bucket. Fifteen witnesses all lying, and lying successfully, each of them made word-perfect.
Will Mr Brown see a way out of that? I think perhaps I’ll go and talk to him rather than using the mobile. This is going to need some prolonged consideration.
*
The ACC, when she gave him her account of what she had learnt from Winston Earl and the implications as she saw them, drew down his long upper lip in deep thought. Harriet had begun to wonder, once more, whether she was expected to put in a ‘Sir?’ or some other prompt. But at last he delivered his verdict.
‘Yes.’
One decision-heavy syllable.
‘Well now, Superintendent, despite what you say about the Minutes of that Council meeting of theirs, I think the time has finally come for a full-scale search of Gwendoline Tritton’s place. Provided always that your assessment of her is correct.’
‘I think it is, sir. You’ve only to look at her. She really believes —’
For a moment she scratched around for a convincing phrase, and found it. ‘You may know, sir, a couplet of Pope’s — my husband’s always quoting it — that goes:
’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
Well, Gwendoline Tritton would believe her own watch, even if it was two hours out.’
‘Pope, did you say? Alexander Pope?’
A good Scots education.
‘Yes, sir, Pope. And I think I haven’t misquoted him.’
‘Never mind if you have. You’ve made your point. A lady who knows for certain that whatever she happens to think is inevitably right. Yes, she might well believe she has some sort of title to that CA 534.’
‘I can go along with that, sir.’
‘Very good. A raid will need some careful planning, however. We must keep the number of officers concerned to an absolute minimum. Until the CA 534 is safe in our hands we must let as few people as possible know that for a time it was not. But, if we’re going to have to search that house — What did you say it was called?’
‘The Willows, sir.’
‘Very good. If we put a search team into The Willows, they’ll have to know just what it is we expect them to find, that wee cardboard box, or maybe just that thickened glass tube, containing — didn’t you say? — some millilitres of oily yellow liquid. But, even if they find nothing, and they may well do that, mind you, then before too long it’ll be all round the Police Club and all the police pubs that something secret has been stolen from Heronsgate House, and then the whole sorry tale will come out. Come out in the press, as likely as not, with people like that young man from the Star hanging round offering drinks. And you know what a story in one of the papers will mean. There’d be another wild panic to add to those al-Qaeda is creating with their discovery that no more than a simple threat can cause the wicked West almost as much damage as 9/11 did.’
He looked at Harriet across the surface of his austere, almost paperless desk.
‘So can I entrust you with finding the minimum team necessary, officers of proven reliability?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘When you’ve done that we’ll choose a time. But don’t waste so much as a minute preparing. If you’re right about that woman Tritton, she won’t keep holding above us the threat of CA 534 much longer. She’ll be using the stuff somewhere. If she’s got it at all, of course.’