Rollerball (Commander Shaw Book 17)

by Philip McCutchan

  And the desk had been gone through. I saw that for myself when I was taken to Railton’s office. Papers everywhere.

  “The safe,” I said. The secretary said that was intact but I’d already lost interest by the time she spoke, because I’d spotted Max’s envelope on the floor by Railton’s chair. No ball. I squatted and lifted the empty envelope on the end of a biro: there might be fingerprints. I dropped it on the desk and then the police came in. A plain-clothes man took it all in like a hawk.

  “You,” he said, jabbing a finger towards me. Maybe I stood out as not belonging, no academic.

  I produced my 6D2 identity, and he hawk-eyed that. “Uh-huh,” he said. “One of Hank Halloran’s mob. How come?” Halloran was, I knew, the 6D2 boss in Sydney.

  I said, “Not quite. Same outfit, but I’m from London. You?”

  “Sergeant Dix,” he answered. It sounded appropriate for a detective. “What’s your standing out here, Commander?”

  I told him, frank and honest. I was on leave and I’d delivered a package. “That one,” I said, pointing. “I think it would be advisable to have it dusted for prints.”

  Dix bent towards it, hunching big shoulders beneath a thin open-necked shirt. He was a big man, as big as me, and had that open-air Australian look, as though he’d be happier in the outback. There were patches of sweat spreading beneath his arm-pits and he didn’t use a deodorant: the air was already thick. He asked, “Know what was in it, do you?” He had a hoarse voice like a boot scraper.

  “No idea,” I said, half-way honest.

  The hawk’s eyes scanned me. “Sure?”

  “It was something my boss in London wanted Professor Railton to have a look at. That’s all I can say at this moment.” Dix seemed to take my drift and didn’t press any more. But he said, “Something he maybe got killed because of.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed.

  Dix scratched his head. “If so … ”

  “If so, then I could be the link.”

  “Huh?”

  I said, “It might be a good idea to get a list of the passengers aboard my flight from London. In the meantime, I’d like to go through all Professor Railton’s papers — including anything that might be on the body.” I noted the instant reaction in Dix’s face: the Australians still didn’t like pommie interference any more than they’d ever done. I added, “That’s important.”

  “Maybe it is,” Dix answered heavily, “but I’m sorry, that’s my affair. Anything relevant, you’ll be told through the 6D2 office.”

  “Look, I — ”

  Dix grinned nastily. “Look nothing. You’re on leave, said so yourself. If you want anything, contact the Police Department through Hank Halloran.” He paused, still eyeing me. “I take it you can be contacted?”

  “Any time,” I said, biting down on anger. “6D2, or the Carlton-Rex. But make it fast. I’m intending to cruise up to the Barrier Reef.”

  “Just you stay put in Sydney,” Dix said, “till you hear different, all right?”

  I left him to it; force majeure — never argue with an Australian cop, especially if you’re a pom. I went back to Miss Mandrake for solace. Her first reaction was a purely selfish one. She asked, “Does this mean the cruiser’s off?”

  “Just for now,” I said. “I hope not entirely, though I sense a recall to London could be lurking. This thing’s not basically Australian, after all.”

  “Damn!” she said. “Are you going to contact Sydney HQ?”

  I nodded. “Of course, and right away. I’ll maybe call Max personally from there.”

  “Don’t forget the time difference.”

  Feeling somewhat vengeful, I said it would be a positive pleasure to dig Max out from Annabel’s or wherever he happened to be spending the early hours. Then I rang the Sydney HQ and spoke to Halloran. I said I was coming round right away if that was OK and he said it was. He’d been expecting me to call.

  Felicity asked, what about lunch? It was already late.

  “I’m not bothered,” I said. “Mind having it on your own?”

  She didn’t mind; I had a cab called and was driven over the harbour bridge, along the Bradfield Highway for Crows Nest. The harbour looked terrific: sparkling blue water, white-capped by an easterly coming in over the Heads, scudding high cloud, and plenty of boat traffic — yachts, power boats, the ferry crossing the harbour from Circular Quay to Manly, a warship leaving Garden Island with the ensign of the Royal Australian Navy fluttering in the wind. As we crossed the bridge, the P. & O. liner Oriana was moving inwards from the Heads. The 6D2 building in Crows Nest was a high-rise one and from Halloran’s office I found a panoramic view of the harbour and one that lasted longer than the drive across the bridge. I admired it and remarked on the wisdom of setting up shop in an out-of-town location like this. “Better than the city centre.”

  “Too right,” Halloran agreed. He was tall, fair and a lot younger than Max. He had a nice smile but I sensed the hard core beneath. And I knew him by repute: a very successful field man in his part of the world with a number of tough assignments behind him. Because he was married with a couple of children he’d preferred to quit the field and take over the more settled life of the top job. But I sensed that the field-work still lingered, that there was an unquenchable nostalgia for it. He didn’t waste any more time on small talk.

  “Railton,” he said. “I’m told something’s gone missing. Fill me in.”

  “Did Max mention balls?”

  “Balls?”

  “Steel ones,” I said. “Or said to be steel but aren’t. Very heavy.” Halloran looked blank so I put him fully in the picture and he still looked blank. I added that it was the ball that was missing, obviously purloined by the killer.

  “So we don’t know whether or not Railton found any answers?”

  “No,” I said. “Not unless he made some notes. It’s a fair bet he would have done, but there’s a policeman called Dix — ”

  “Oh, I know Dix,” Halloran interrupted. “That bloke, he can be a fair cow at times.” We were sitting down by this time and the 6D2 boss drummed his fingers on his desk, frowning out through a big window beside him. Then he took up a telephone and asked to be put through to the Sydney police. He remained silent while he waited. Two minutes later he was speaking to Sergeant Dix, asking what had been found on the body. Talking, he nodded at intervals then said, “I’d be obliged if they could be sent round, Sergeant.” There was a pause and a loud hoarse gabble from the other end of the line then Halloran said quietly, “I told you I’d be obliged, Sergeant. I can always refer the request elsewhere, of course.” Another pause, then: “Righto. Thank you.”

  Halloran rang off and looked across at me with a grin. “Stupid bastard. Anyway, there’s something coming over. Like a beer, would you?”

  I said I would, very much. Halloran got up and crossed the room to a refrigerator in a corner and brought out some bottles of Swan beer from Western Australia, misted with cold. He poured two glasses and the result took a load of dust from my throat. I asked about fingerprints. Nothing yet, Halloran said, but Dix was working on it. And he already had a passenger list of my flight in from London. So, for that matter, had Halloran. He brought it out from a drawer in his desk and passed it over. The aircraft hadn’t been filled to capacity from the start and some had left at Singapore. Allowing for two that had embarked at Bahrein, thirty-six persons had arrived in Sydney, Felicity and me included. There was a mix of nationalities and races: a couple of Germans, three Americans, two from Eire, a family of five Saudi Arabians, two Pakistanis. The rest were British or Australian. That list wasn’t much help, but it was just possible the passengers’ fingerprints would help. I was seeing a distinct link between me and Railton’s death and that, I thought, had to involve someone aboard the jet, and someone who would pass as a window-cleaner to the casual glance for just so long as it took him or her to climb to a window, shoot Railton, nip in and carry out a search, and nip back out again. That alone would write off s
ome of them, including the geriatric from Worthing.

  I was still trying to read things into the list and to tie up names with the faces, or such of them as I remembered, when Halloran’s secretary buzzed. Sergeant Dix had arrived in person. When he was brought in, he gave me an up-and-down look and a nod. Halloran poured him a beer and waved him to a seat. He was looking grim and he didn’t waste any time in coming to his point. He said, “Look, I want to know what was in that package, Mr Halloran. No fooling around.”

  Halloran shot me a look. Dix saw that and pounced on it. “Right. Someone knows. Just tell me.”

  Of course, he had to know. I said, “A ball. A steel ball which isn’t steel.”

  “Hence Railton?”

  I nodded. “My boss in London needed to know what the metal was.”

  “Why didn’t you say, eh?”

  “I had to clear it first.”

  “With 6D2?”

  “That’s right. I’m sorry.”

  Dix was looking offended, but he didn’t say any more on that point. He said, “What you say ties up with Railton’s notes, not that there’s much.”

  “May I see them?”

  He reached into an inside pocket and passed me a sheet of blue writing paper, somewhat crumpled. He said, “Whoever killed Railton didn’t wait to find this. We don’t think the pockets were gone through at all.”

  “The need for speed,” I said. “The less they lingered … they may have heard sounds from the secretary’s office.”

  “They?”

  I shrugged. “For want of a more precise word. At this moment, we know nothing beyond the fact of the ball’s existence.” I looked at Railton’s notes; most of what he’d written conveyed nothing to me. Figures, formulae … it was out of my experience. His writing was atrocious but just about readable, or anyway understandable despite his own brand of shorthand. The ball was not steel and Railton had been unable to establish what in fact it was. But he’d subjected it to tests — he’d tried to break it up, though the notes expressed this somewhat more scientifically.

  And he hadn’t been able to break it. The most advanced technology in the metal-smashing field had achieved nothing. There was some guff about stresses, oxidation, solution and amalgamation, welding, fusing and electrolysis and so on … Anyway, everything had failed, and the scribbled notes ended in a very big query. I say ended, but this wasn’t quite accurate. The technical notations ended with it, but then came the solitary scrawl: tetradoxin, underlined and followed by another query.

  No explanation given, but it sounded to me like some sort of chemical.

  I looked at Dix. “Tetradoxin?” I asked.

  He looked grimmer than ever. “I’ve looked it up,” he said. “It’s more potent than cyanide. Extraction from the liver of the puffer fish … also to be found in newts — Californian newts to be exact.”

  “And the puffer fish — where does that come from?”

  Dix said irritably, “Buggered if I know. That’s not the point. Tetradoxin is. You know it’s potential? To quote just one aspect — water supplies. Just a drop in a reservoir, you’d wipe out a whole bloody city, right? All the same, the point hasn’t yet been reached and maybe it isn’t intended. For now, I’d like to know how come Railton noted tetradoxin in connexion with that ball. Any ideas, have you?”

  He looked from one to the other of us. We had no ideas at all, nothing whatever to advance as a reason why Railton should have appended the word to his notes. But I made a suggestion. I said, “I think we might have a word with some of Railton’s colleagues, those concerned with — ”

  “Disease warfare?” This was Sergeant Dix.

  I said, “I was going to suggest medicine or biochemistry in point of fact. But I see what you mean, Sergeant. Railton’s not concerned with any of that, so the chances are he consulted someone in the appropriate discipline. It’ll be interesting to find out what first prompted him to do that.” I looked across at Halloran. “I’d like to call London if I may?”

  “Sure thing. Max?”

  “Right. And to hell with the time. It’ll be — what — around 4 a.m.” Halloran pushed a phone across his desk and I dialled Max’s home number on IDD. It was a while before I got him but he sounded wide awake. The line was an extension of Max’s 6D2 security line and I could say my piece without worrying about eavesdroppers. I got some of my report across, then Max, obviously impatient, cut in on me. He said, “There’s been something very nasty. A child in Belford in Northumberland, on the Al. A three-year-old … swallowed one of the balls, God knows how the child ever lifted it to its mouth but it did. That child was dead inside twelve hours. Forensic found no ball and it wasn’t passed, you can take my word for that. But they found something else: a trace of — ”

  “Tetradoxin?’’

  I could almost see Max gape down the wire. “How the hell!”

  I told him. I asked, “Anything else? I mean, have you any more facts, or theories come to that?”

  “I’ve told you all I know — for now. Forensic may come up with something but I fancy not — they’re flummoxed, like me. And you, it seems. But keep your mind on tetradoxin.”

  “I will. Do I come back to the UK?”

  “No. Stay where you are and act normally — you’re on leave.” I said, “But the action’s in UK, isn’t it? Just the one ball here, brought in by me — ”

  “I know. But someone’s aware you’re there.”

  “You mean I’m the magnet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said. Being a magnet is a nasty feeling, though I was pleased enough to be staying in Australia. Max said he would be in touch the moment he had any news and I was to reciprocate. Then he cut the call before I had time to ask him if it was still OK to head for the Great Barrier Reef. Just as well, perhaps, since that left the decision with me. All else being equal, I decided to stick to my plans. Someone — one of ‘them’ — might know what those plans were and I could still be in accordance with orders. But I wouldn’t head out to sea just yet; I had things to do in Sydney, and one of them concerned that passenger list. Another was to twist Halloran’s arm for a better-than-average supply of gun power and ammunition to be loaded aboard the Sundowner.

  3.

  Sergeant Dix gave me formal clearance to leave Sydney at will; he wasn’t too bad a bloke and he began to co-operate. We went through the list of flight passengers together and he said he was having them checked out, though neither he nor I expected to establish anything unless we were lucky with the prints on the package that had contained the ball. He gave me a lift back to the Carlton-Rex and I rejoined Miss Mandrake. Soon after I’d filled her in on my visit to Halloran, and on Max’s report, Dix rang through to say that the fingerprint check on the package had proved blank so far. There was nothing on the computerised file that fitted, but he would contact Scotland Yard and, via Halloran, the Foreign Office security index and report again. Of course, there were still the passengers; he would start interviewing them soon, and getting prints. Those, that was, that he could contact. Some would have to be left to the police in other areas, other states. They hadn’t all given Sydney or New South Wales addresses as their final destinations.

  I felt impatient and looked it.

  Felicity said, “Early days. It’s always the same at the start. All brick walls.”

  “Yes, I know.” I wandered over to the window and looked out at the skyscraper blocks, the straight streets crossed with other straight streets. New York, shifted to the Pacific seaboard: there was precious little pommie influence left even though we’d begun it all. I said, “I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t get what?”

  “Tetradoxin. Why and how? It can’t have been on the outside of that bloody ball, yet Railton couldn’t crack the thing, couldn’t open it. So how?”

  “Well, you should know something soon.”

  I nodded and went on brooding. On the way from 6D2 HQ, Dix had stopped at a phone box and I’d called
Railton’s secretary. As a result of this I had an appointment with a man named Boydell, a friend of Railton’s, a research biochemist working for the federal government in Canberra. He was currently in Sydney; I was to meet him in Railton’s office at 6 p.m. It wasn’t all that long to wait but the time dragged. The implications had become hideous, the more so when taken in conjunction with Max’s report about the child in Belford.

  *

  I looked around Railton’s office. The police had been through it and all was neat again. Dix would have picked up any clues that were going, but I made a check myself just in case. There wasn’t anything remarkable; it had been a very straightforward killing, obviously with a silenced gun. Dix had already told me that no-one had noticed anything out of the ordinary, no-one had apparently been aware of any man climbing down from Railton’s window. It’s always the same: boldness pays off. You never query a man in workman’s rig. Dix had drawn a total blank in that direction, and in any case to my mind it all militated against the theory of someone from the London flight being directly involved in actual, first-hand murder. He or she would have needed time to reconnoitre, to case the joint. Of course, there could have been a hiring … as I was reflecting on all this Boydell was shown in — Dr John Boydell in full.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said, smiling, then got down to business right away. “Hugh Railton was a good friend, Commander. I’d like to help. Just tell me how.”

  “Tetradoxin,” I said. “Did Professor Railton consult you, by any chance?”

  He nodded. “He did. I used local hospital resources and made an analysis for him. Result, tetradoxin. Do I take it you know what that is, and what it can do?”

  “Yes. What I wanted to know was … did you see what I can only call the container, Dr Boydell?”

  “The ball — yes, I did. Hugh was flummoxed as to the metal, something new to him. The weight was incredible for the size. What do you want to know?”