Orchestrated Death

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘I see.’ This business of being proved right got worse and worse.

  ‘Anyway, they’ve gone into the business, and it’s all legit –except that it isn’t, of course. They don’t sell the oil in Italy at all, as we would have expected. The output of that particular subsidiary is all export, and the two biggest international customers are – want to guess?’

  ‘England and America.’

  ‘Britain and the States – got it in two. Their turnover is pretty big. In this country alone they do two hundred million. That’s an awful lot of oil’

  ‘An awful lot of people like Italian food.’

  Dickson looked at him sharply. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

  ‘No sir.’

  ‘I’ve got a list of their outlets. Some of them are wholesalers, so I doubt if the list is complete as far as retailers go. Obviously they must all sell oil in some form, but I doubt whether more than one or two are actually bent – it wouldn’t pay them to run the outfit that way. Your place in Tutman Street is on the list, and everything is backed up by the right paperwork. On paper everything is rose-scented, and that’s the way it has to be, of course. No funny business. Nobody with a previous. They’ll have people out all the time, agents, looking for likely recruits.

  ‘Who recruited Anne-Marie, I wonder?’ Slider said.

  Dickson cocked his head. ‘From what I gather, she was a cold-blooded unemotional, ambitious little cow. So she was ideal material, wasn’t she? I mean, it was either that or the Foreign Office.’ He leaned back and the chair creaked protestingly. ‘The other end, the Vincey end, is even more difficult to finger.’ He swivelled the chair and knocked a file off the desk with his elbow. Confining him in an office was like keeping a buffalo in the bathroom. ‘Vincey’s has been in existence as a business for over a hundred years on that same premises in Bond Street. Irreproachable address, first-class clientele and all that. The shop and the goodwill were purchased eleven years ago by an agent acting for an international antiques trading consortium, who had some very big American money behind them. The money traces back to a New York holding company with a Park Avenue address.’

  ‘Swanky.’

  ‘As you say. It’s called AM Holdings, and the President of the company is called Walter Fontodi.’

  ‘All impeccably above board?’

  Dickson gave a savage smile. ‘Squeaky bloody clean. If they could nail this AM Holdings they’d be happy folk over there. But they haven’t yet found a way of touching it.’

  ‘So the Vincey end is not a new exercise?’

  ‘That’s the way they work. That’s the beauty of a family business, isn’t it? You can take your time over things. If you don’t benefit yourself, your son will, or your grandson. It’s all in the bloody Family. That’s a joke.’

  Slider quirked his lips obediently.

  Dickson rocked the chair back and let it fall forward with a thump that shook the floorboards. ‘They buy up a place with a first-class record, and run it straight.’ And I mean really straight – rates, taxes, VAT, the lot. They do that for a number of years before they ever start using it for their purposes. They want respectable, and they can afford to pay for it. Buying Vincey’s and running it at a loss for a couple of years must have cost them a couple of million, but what’s that to them? They’re handling telephone numbers every year. Probably set it off as a tax loss.’

  ‘And Vincey’s really is respectable.’

  ‘Yes, of course. They’re simply buying and selling antiques, and if some of their customers are marked cards, so what? They never touch stolen goods. In fact, they’re probably more honest than your average dealer. I’m told Saloman has an excellent relationship with the local police.’

  ‘And who is Saloman?’

  ‘Ah, that’s an interesting detail. When they bought the business, it was on the market because the previous owner had died – that was the real, original Saloman. He was in his sixties, and he’d been running Vincey’s since 1935. Apparently he was a fantastic old boy, a real expert, knew everything about stringed instruments, and a whale on bows. He’d been a concert violinist in his youth – apparently quite a good one – but for some reason gave it up and went into dealing, and specialised in antiquities.’

  Slider raised his brows. ‘You mean they took over his name and his reputation? The young man at Sotheby’s sent Atherton to Saloman because he was an expert on violin bows.’

  ‘Nice, isn’t it? I suppose anyone who was around when the changeover took place would know the old boy had died, but the general public wouldn’t, and by now I don’t suppose anyone remembers.’

  ‘So who is our Saloman?’

  ‘His name isn’t Saloman, of course. He isn’t even Jewish, though he wears the hat. He’s an Italian, name of Joe Novanto. Came over during the war as a refugee, after the Nazi occupation of Italy. He changed his name to Joseph Neves and got himself a job with Hill’s of Hanwell, making violin bows, which apparently was his trade back home. When the war ended he stayed on in this country, and got a job at Vincey’s.’

  ‘So he really could do it?’

  ‘Oh yes – that part was genuine all right. He was taken on to repair and renovate bows and instruments they were handling, and he studied the ancient instrument trade under the real Saloman, so he was learning from an expert. And when Saloman died and the business was sold, he took over the name, the reputation, even the character. Of course, the fact that he’d been working there so long would help to confuse the issue – people would recognise him, and in time his identity got fudged over. I don’t suppose many people go to a shop like that more than once in their lives.’

  ‘And of course he really did know Saloman’s stuff.’

  ‘He’s been doing it for twenty-five years.’

  ‘But then, at what stage was he recruited? If it was the organisation that bought Vincey’s when the old man died, was Neves already one of them?’

  ‘God knows. I don’t suppose we ever shall. But if you want my personal opinion I’d say yes. It’s carrying the business of sleepers a hell of a long way, but these people work on a grand scale. You can afford to make plans that take fifty years to mature if it’s your own flesh-and-blood that’ll benefit. I’d say that Neves, or Novanto, was their man from the beginning, before he ever left Italy, and he was just slipped in when the opportunity came in case he was ever needed. But of course, there’s nothing we can pin on him. He not only looks legit, he is, except for using Saloman’s name, and that’s not a crime.’

  ‘So where do we go from here?’

  Dickson looked at him carefully, and placed both his meaty fists on the desk top, making himself larger and squarer than ever. Body language? Slider thought. Dickson wrote the book on it! ‘That’s the part you’re not going to like, Bill. I’m afraid you don’t go anywhere: they’re taking the case out of our hands.’

  ‘Special Branch?’

  ‘They’ve got their own operation going on the Family. They know what they’re doing. Come on, there’s no use looking like that. You must have expected it. I’m only surprised they left it with us as long as they did.’

  ‘And Anne-Marie?’ Slider’s lips felt numb.

  ‘Well, she’s a bit of a side issue really, isn’t she? Besides, she was one of their own operators. Obviously they knocked her off when she started being a nuisance, and since they’ve cleaned up their own mess, you can’t expect our boys to get too excited about it. There are bigger fish to fry, and Special don’t want us mucking about and treading mud all over their carpet.’

  ‘And Mrs Gostyn? And Thompson?’

  Dickson shrugged. ‘Look, I know how you feel, but it’s more important to nail the blokes at the top than some two-by-four local operator. If we go poking sticks up the network looking for the murderer, we’ll scare them into closing it down and a lot of hard work’ll have been wasted. In any case, even if you could discover who murdered the Austen girl, it’s seven to four on that he’s dead by now. They don’t tol
erate failures, as you know, and anyone who draws attention to himself is a failure. Ipso bloody facto. They’ll have topped him, no sweat.’

  Slider merely looked at him, and Dickson replaced his fists with his elbows on the desk top and looked beguiling.

  ‘It’s not as bad as all that, come on. Instructions are to close the file officially. Thompson killed Austen and then committed suicide, and the old lady was just an accident. That’s going on record, and it makes our figures very nice, I can tell you.’

  ‘Our figures?’ Slider repeated disbelievingly.

  ‘They’re letting us have the credit, officially, and since you did most of the slog, I’m putting it down to you, Bill. It goes on your record. Earns you quite a few more Brownie points. You’ll be a Girl Guide in no time.’

  Dickson sat back with an expansive smile, inviting Slider to look surprised, grateful, modest and hopeful in that order. The implied promise was in the air: the promise Irene had longed for, for so many years, was dangled, a golden vision, just within reach.

  Slider stood up. ‘Will that be all, sir?’

  Dickson’s smile disappeared like the sun going in. The granite showed through the red meat of his face, and his voice was hard and impatient.

  ‘You’re off the case. That’s official, d’you understand? Forget it.’

  As Slider passed the door of the CID room on his way back to his office, Atherton called to him, and he paused and looked in blankly. Beevers was there too, sitting on Atherton’s desk reading a newspaper.

  ‘Was it the report on Saloman?’ Atherton asked ‘Did Dickson have anything?’

  ‘I never thought the old man would go for that schmucky Mafioso angle,’ Beevers complained. ‘He’s always so keen on a good, solid money motive. Now I really think I’m onto something there. I’ve been breaking my balls over John Brown and his boyfriend, and I think there’s something fishy about them.’

  ‘Well we know that,’ Atherton said wearily.

  ‘No, something else, I mean. Did you know that Trevor Byers was up before the disciplinary committee of the BMA about eighteen months ago? I can’t find out what for, yet –they’re as tight as a crab’s arse about stuff like that – but it would account for why old Brown’s so fidgety. And if Austen had found out about it somehow –’

  ‘The case is closed,’ Slider said, stemming the flood. ‘Official, from the very top. We’re all back on traffic violations.’

  ‘Closed?’ they chorused, like Gilbert and Sullivan.

  ‘There are bigger fish to fry. Anything to do with The Family is for Special Branch alone. Hands off, do not touch. And Anne-Marie has become an unimportant side issue.’

  In the momentary silence that followed, Atherton noted how Slider always talked about Anne-Marie and never about Thompson, as though the one were an intolerable outrage, and the other no more than he deserved. But he forbore to mention it. Instead he filched the paper out of Beevers’ hand and opened it at the entertainments page.

  ‘Oh well, that’s that, then,’ he said. ‘At least we’ll have our weekends to ourselves again. I wonder if there are any good shows on.’

  ‘And you can find out if your children still recognise you,’ Beevers said to Slider. ‘Anyone fancy a cup of tea?’

  Slider shook his head without even having understood what he had been asked, and walked away. When he had gone, Beevers turned to Atherton.

  ‘What’s up with him, then? Is he cracking up? I hear he took Norma to Birmingham for the day and never even laid a hand on her knee. I mean, that’s not normal.’

  ‘Oh shut up, Alec,’ Atherton said wearily, turning a page.

  Beevers looked complacent. ‘Detecting’s a young man’s job. I’ve always said so and I always will.’

  ‘Not when you reach forty, you won’t.’

  ‘These old guys can’t take the pressure, you see. They let things get on top of them. The next thing you know, old Bill will start weeping over suicides and writing poetry. I always say –’

  Oh stuff it!’ Atherton said, getting up. He flung the newspaper in the bin and walked away, but Beevers simply raised his voice a little to carry.

  ‘You’re not so young any more either, are you, Jim? Time’s running out for you too, old lad.’

  Left alone, Beevers picked the newspaper out of the bin, smoothed it out, opened it at the sports page, and began to read. He whistled cheerfully and swung his rather short legs, which didn’t reach the floor when he was perched on a desk. If they couldn’t stand the heat, he thought with his usual originality, they should stay out of the kitchen.

  CHAPTER 15

  A Runt is as Good as a Feast

  Slider went back to his office and did a bit of desultory tidying up, which soon degenerated into sitting at his desk and staring moodily at the photograph of Anne-Marie. At the end of any case he usually felt a lassitude, a disinclination to work, once the momentary excitement of the result wore off, leaving only deflation and paperwork. But this was much worse, because he had no answers to the many questions, nothing to detract from the sense of injustice towards the victims.

  The phone rang and he picked it up reluctantly. It was O’Flaherty. Even on the phone he sounded massive.

  ‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it,’ he chortled. ‘I’ve remembered who the little runt was. It was Ronnie Brenner.’

  ‘Half-inch Brenner? The bloke who used to sell hookey watches down the Goldhawk Road?’

  ‘No, no, not him. He emigrated – oh, it must be two years ago.’

  ‘Emigrated?’

  ‘To Norfolk. He’s gone straight, got a half-share in a chicken farm. Plays the trombone in the Sally Army band in Norwich. He sent me a postcard, the cheeky sod. No, I’m talking about Ronnie Brenner: little feller, racecourse tout, bookies’ runner, one-time unsuccessful jockey, tipster. You name it, he’s done it, so long as it’s to do with harses. He’s always hanging about racecourses – Banbury and Kempton Park mostly, they all have their favourites. We’ve had him in on sus a few times for hangin’ about stables with a pair of binoculars an’ a little book, but we’ve never managed to nail him for anything. No previous, d’you see – that’s why I had such a job trackin’ him down in me memory. Sure, don’t you remember we had a look at him for that doping business at Wembley in ‘88, but there was nothing on him.’

  ‘Wembley? I don’t remember. I think that was when I was away on holiday,’ Slider said with an effort. ‘I remember you all talking about it when I came back. A bit of excitement in the silly season.’ His brain made a determined effort to catch up with him. ‘But they don’t have horses at Wembley, do they? I thought it was football.’

  ‘The Harse of the Year Show, ya stewpot. Are you awake, son? The local lads pulled him in at Banbury for the same thing, and he laid his hand on his heart and swore he’d never do a thing like that to man’s best friend. Touching, it was. There wasn’t a dry seat in the house. Anyway, that’s who it is. He lives in Cathnor Road. Didn’t I tell you I never forget a shit?’

  Slider’s tired brain was whirling with fragments of conversations, free-associating and making no sense. Atherton’s voice said if you scoop up one little turd the world’s a sweeter place, and he tried to grab the words as they floated past. ‘No previous … that doping business at Wembley… so long as it’s to do with horses … Banbury … Cathnor Road … never forget a shit… if you scoop -’

  ‘Billy, are you there, for Chrissakes? Would you ever speak to me? It’s a lonely thing to be a desk sergeant and unloved.’

  ‘A lonely thing …’ Slider took his head in his hands and shook his brain. ‘Sorry Pat. I’m a bit tired. Thanks for the information, but it’s come too late. The Austen case is closed – official, from the top. It’s gone up to Special Branch, so there’s nothing more I can do about it. I’m off the case.’

  ‘So long as the case is off you,’ O’Flaherty said warningly. ‘Ah, don’t take it so hard, darlin’. In a long life you’ll see worse injustice than that.’ Slider d
idn’t answer. ‘Brenner may have had nothing to do with it, but if I see him hangin’ around I’ll pull him in anyway. It doesn’t do to let the flies settle.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, thanks Pat,’ Slider said vaguely.

  ‘Listen, why don’t you go home, insteada roostin’ up there. Have an evening off for a change, while you can?’

  ‘Yes, I think I will.’

  ‘And if your wife calls, I’ll tell her you’re out on a case,’ O’Flaherty added drily.

  Slider’s mind was not with him, and it took a moment before he said, ‘Oh, yes, I – yes, thanks. Thanks, Pat.’

  ‘And remind me to tell you some time,’ O’Flaherty said very gently, ‘what a stupid bastard you are.’

  Slider collected his coat, and went out into the grey January afternoon.

  The tall, shabby house on Cathnor Road had an air of long neglect and temporary desertion. Slider had been driving about, he hardly knew where, for so long that it was now dark. He had often found before that driving had the effect of releasing his subconscious mind to worry out problems in a way the conscious mind, being too cluttered, could not do; but this time the only conclusion he had come to was that, off the case or not, he wanted to find out what Ronnie Brenner had been up to.

  The house was divided into flats, and since it was dark there ought to have been lights in at least some of the windows, but the building gave no sign of life as Slider passed it and parked a little beyond. He walked up the steps to the front door where there was a variety of bells, none of them labelled. He pressed a few at random, and then stood looking about him.

  Almost opposite him was the turning that led to the cul-de-sac where The Crown and Sceptre stood. Ah, yes, he thought, that’s why Cathnor Road had been ringing bells in his mind. And talking of ringing bells, he pressed a few more, and stepped back to look up at the windows. Almost at once he heard someone hiss from somewhere below him. A small and anxious face was craning up at him from the area door to the basement flat, which was hidden under the steps on which he stood.