“What’s he been up to?”
“It’s what he’s going to get up to that’s gnawing at me. I’ve got one of those feelings about it. Too much said in one breath, if you see what I mean.”
“I will if you tell me.”
“He rang me, would I go round to his office. Wanted to take out a new life policy. Hell of a big one. £45,000—that’s the sort of soft canvass we dream of. But it was as if it was all on the spur of the moment. He wanted it all done straight away. Of course, I told him that at his age and for that sort of sum, it would have to be subject to medical. Well, how soon could that be arranged? He tried to make a joke of it: I’d better get on with this before he changed his mind, the premiums being what I’d just quoted. But that isn’t all, Jack. He wasn’t himself. He was strung up about something. He asked too many suggestive questions. How soon would the policy be in force? How soon would he be covered? What if he fell under a bus tomorrow? What if he crashed his car? Oh, all said as if it was a joke—and it’s not the kind of joke I’m hearing for the first time. But there was something about it that I didn’t like, something not as it should be.”
“I always keep a weather eye open for things that are not as they should be,” Mosley said.
“Well, there you have it Jack, for what it’s worth. For God’s sake never breathe a word in our office that I’ve been to see you. But I have. I’ve got it off my mind. I’ll leave you to make what you can of it.”
Have you ever seen this woman in any of the offices or corridors of County Hall?
Mrs. Daisy Schofield, office cleaner, of 18, Chapel Brow, came forward. Mrs. Schofield had been plaguing herself for days, had been losing sleep for nights, eaten through and through by the knowledge that she ought to come forward. She knew she had done wrong. But it had been an old diary, hadn’t it? It had been thrown away. She had found it in a wastepaper basket, years ago. It had been the picture on the front cover that had attracted her—such a lovely woman, such an honest face, such appealing eyes. (Actually it was one of Manet’s prostitutes.)
Daisy Schofield had been feeling fed up, the day she had overheard a conversation between Mrs. Cater and Mr. Somers in the Planning Office: fed up because they were shifting her to Highways next week—after seven years in Planning; fed up because her husband had gone on short time, and their Sandra’s marriage was on the rocks. She had heard Corfu mentioned, and that other place, that she did not know how to pronounce. But she recognized both place names. She had read them in the diary. And she knew that Mrs. Cater was being short-changed in her quest for information, knew that they were all a pack of double-dealers, knew that what went on on those trips abroad was to nobody’s advantage except those who went.
So she buttonholed Mrs. Cater.
“Excuse me, dearie. I couldn’t help hearing what you was talking about in there. I’ve got something at home that might interest you.”
She had made arrangements to meet Mrs. Cater in Highways, but the first time Mrs. Cater had not turned up, and the second time Mrs. Schofield had forgotten to bring the diary. But it had changed hands at last. Maybe somebody was going to be taught a lesson this time. Mrs. Cater had the look of someone who stuck at things once she’d started them.
“What’s going to happen to me now, sir?”
The Chief was not in genial mood. He had a detached attitude to crime. Although it was his bread and butter, crime rarely penetrated into his upstairs office except on paper. But crime in the ranks of men like Harry Whitcombe and Tod Hunter distressed him. It was not only the thought that they were letting the Establishment down: it was a tremor in the very joists of the Establishment itself.
“I can see how Harry Whitcombe’s got himself into this position,” the Assistant Chief Constable said. “You know Harry as well as I do—a Bradburn Patriot, one might almost call him a Bradburn Nationalist. Transport him to a resort as far away from home as the Dutch coast and he’s pining for the curlew in the heather. Let him meet somebody in a bar in the Aegean who mentions Marldale Nab and he’s having to fight back his sentimental tears. And it isn’t that Harry talks big: damn it, as far as the architecture and land usage of Marldale and Pringle are concerned, he is big—however casual he may make himself look. But Harry’s downfall has been the same as the thing that raised him up: the desire to please everybody about him. Not to impress them, not to recruit them to his side, not to do deals with them to their mutual advantage—to please them, to be the chap they’re glad they’ve met. “I’ve got friends who’d put good money into a shoot on Pringle Moorside,” somebody says to him in a bar in Scheveningen. And Harry knows that it’s land that the Council no longer wants. He doesn’t know what the Post Office have got on their drawing-board.”
“But Tod Hunter does.”
“‘Drop in and see me when we get back home,’ Harry says. And once Harry has implied a promise, he’ll see it through.”
“As long as he believes it’s legal.”
“Oh, Harry wouldn’t take chances with the law if he knew he was taking them. He’s too keen to stay up on his mountain. But he was beginning to wonder. That to my mind is the biggest surprise that’s come out of this so far: that it was Harry who went to Tod as Chief Executive and insisted on his sending three case-histories to his friend in the DPP’s office. Because Harry was beginning to suspect, and he wanted to know. He was beginning to suspect Tod—and he had guts enough to let Tod know that. But Tod has enough know-how to submit flawed files to his friend, essential evidence missing. Tod could still bluff things out at that stage.”
“This unsigned-for file that they’ve found in Harry’s possession—”
“He’s been open enough about that, the AC(T) says. He’s often cut red tape with the clerks in Registry. They’re always glad enough down there if someone offers to save them work. Something he wanted to look at in his own time, at his own pace.”
“So Harry’s in the clear?”
“I’ve had a word with that Chief Inspector they’ve brought up from Fraud—the one who looks like a gorilla. Nice fellow, though, and knows his stuff. And he says as far as he’s concerned there’s nothing to go forward against Harry.”
“Alas, not true of Tod,” the Chief said, and his pity was genuine. “Though they haven’t charged him yet. Why is it hanging fire?”
“Some tactic of the Assistant Commissioner. Terrorism is his line, not corruption. It’s only a matter of time.”
“They’ll hit Tod hard.”
“Oh, he’ll go down. And he all but got away with it. He’s always played it as safe as it could be played. A different front man for every transaction, never one professionally known: a man in Hunter’s position is always meeting punters who are looking for ways of trebling their capital. Hunter sells introductions, splits the earners.”
“But to commission murder—” the Chief said, sincerely dismal that such a path could be trodden by anyone that he personally knew.
“When it comes to men who would contemplate murder, we won’t find the answer in your mind and mine. At least, I hope not. But think what Hunter knew he had to lose: job, pension, security, repute. Oh, I know it’s the same for any man who gets his deserts in a position like Hunter’s. But we’ve got to take Hunter’s own peculiar temperament into account as well: a quiet sort of pride, but a positive one. He came from nowhere and he’s ended up by running us all. He has dictated to professionals and democrats for years. He has pontificated. His word has been binding. He might look like a man who has no enemies—but that’s only because he defeated them all back along the line. There are plenty waiting to gloat. Oh, no, Chief—I can see how Hunter’s mind set him looking for someone to carry out a contract on Mrs. Cater. There were some things that he couldn’t face—just could not face.”
Beamish knew now on which extension he could get hold of Deirdre Harrison before she set out on her day’s differentiation between true deprivation and mere guile.
“Hi!”
“Hi!”
> “There’s something Mosley has asked me to find out. He seems to think it’s top priority.”
“I’ll try.”
“The cat. Mrs. Cater’s cat. Boudicca. When you came away that night, after drinking chartreuse, did Mrs. Bexwell anoint the threshold with that essence of lioness she’d had from her husband?”
“She did, yes. Freshening the place up, she called it. Might as well leave a reminder that we were still a power in the land, that was her reasoning.”
“Good. That’s what Mosley thought. He also wants to know—”
“Thinking big, these days, isn’t he?”
“He also wants to know, was Boudicca indoors or out when you came away?”
“Indoors, of course. She wouldn’t go through a barrier like that. It was a fresh concentration. It would have turned back a menagerie on heat.”
“But she did go through it. The milkman found her outside, couldn’t get her to go back.”
“My mind reels. This is epoch-making.”
“Mosley seems to think so.”
Chapter Twenty-five
The Assistant Commissioner (Terrorism) was being criticized in some circles for his apparent hesitation to charge Tod Hunter. Mosley claimed to understand his thinking.
“It’s obvious, I’d have thought. Once Hunter’s in the slammer, the heavy mob know they can say goodbye to the balance of their fee. They’re taking a bigger chance than they care for, as it is. And the AC is waiting until people have congregated for the ringing of the bells before he pounces.”
“Oh, that’s obviously his chosen battle-ground,” the Assistant Chief Constable (Crime) said. “And if I’d known what demands he was going to make on my resources, I’d have launched a special recruiting campaign two years ago.”
It was true that the AC(T) had approached the showdown in the spirit of Alamein or Normandy. He had put shadows on the witches that were more like mobile cordons—even on Deirdre Harrison’s daily shuttle-service through the webs of neglect, bureaucratic incompassion and domestic ineptitude. He had requisitioned phalanxes from as far afield as Tameside to man the hills against the cohorts that the Morning Herald had whipped up to come in and witness either a miracle or a farce.
The Assistant Commissioner had cold contempt for both journalism and witchcraft. The three women were bait for his terrorists; he had no other interest in them. Naturally, he was not setting them up to be shot at. They were to be kept together and closely guarded in Priscilla Bladon’s house.
“That’s your job, Inspector Mosley—you and Sergeant Bream.
I’m not suggesting that you can control them—but you do seem to be able to exercise some vestige of influence over them.”
He had set up a bell tent in the churchyard, equipped with all sorts of technological visual and acoustic aids. Silhouettes of mobile effigies with pointed hats were going to be seen bobbing about on the canvas, to the accompaniment of witch music recorded by synthesizers. The Herald, its adjudicators, its hired security force and its dogs were to be allowed to mount what guard they wanted on the tower, their back-seat co-operation rewarded by a front seat for their camerman if, as was hoped, the silhouettes were sniped at.
“We’ve no case that will stand up against these three unless we can catch them with murder weapons in their hands.”
The assassins had been under consummate surveillance since Beamish had reported their presence: round the clock and with triple back-up. They were known to the motel register as Reginald Bates, Sarah Saunders and Des Stonham: the names barely interested the AC(T)—these three had worn as many labels in their time as they had done jobs. In the daytime, they came and went about Bradcaster like people dedicated to the education of small firms in the potential of electronic office equipment. The Assistant Commissioner had played no small part in shaping the phraseology of the Morning Herald, making sure that Bates, Saunders and Stonham were kept informed down to the last detail of the best time and place for them to strike.
The AC(T) had also exercised a seam of imagination that had surprised some of his senior associates. About twenty yards from the tent, and with a footpath trodden towards it so that it could not be missed, he had had a depression stamped out in the ground, even a half-bale of straw scattered about, as if the spot were the regular resort of someone like Merle Cox and Kevin Kenyon. His argument was that if his strike-force missed the trio in the first round, they might head for a ready-made love-nest for their usual work-out.
“If we don’t catch them at one of their specialisms, we’ll have them at the other.”
Zero hour was from eleven o’clock onwards: even the AC(T) did not need to be persuaded of the mystic significance of midnight. Deployment of the outer defences was completed by first dark and it was at half past eight that the first incident was logged. A detachment borrowed from Bradcaster was straddling Herbert Garside’s mud-track, and not all of them had yet settled down to take the exercise seriously. But a hypothetical situation became a reality when two of them heard the time-honoured sounds of someone trying to get through their sector with stealth: the sibilance of long wet grass against clothing—even as careless an indication as a cough.
Immediately, operational cynicism evaporated. The pair who had first heard the would-be infiltrator separated and came down on him from obliquely behind, bringing him down with a classical tackle. His resistance was feeble. He was a frail and elderly man in soaked pyjamas and a cheap towelling dressing-gown who had discharged himself from Pringle Hospital—where the Morning Herald was as popular as any newspaper in the wards, and where bets were being taken on the Marldale witches. He had difficulty with his speech, said that his name was Peter Muller, that the church clock was his “dove,” and that he was not going to have any police sergeant messing about with it. He was taken at once to operational headquarters.
Yesterday Mosley had actually come into HQ with the express purpose of speaking to Grimshaw. He had an accumulation of rest days owing to him, he told the Superintendent. He knew that the final briefing for tomorrow night’s encounter was scheduled for four in the afternoon, and he did not propose to be a minute late for that. But he wished to take the morning off. Grimshaw was uneasy: it was unusual for Mosley to worry over-much about rest days. When he did take one, it sometimes appeared afterwards that he had achieved more in it than he did on a normal working day. Rest days were all too often his opportunity for moving beyond the geographical limits of his proper area. Grimshaw always heard with trepidation that Mosley was ostensibly resting. On the other hand—
“You are up to something, Mosley.”
“Private business,” Mosley said.
Beamish was not asked whether they owed him a rest day. Grimshaw did not propose to waste the sergeant’s temporary attachment to the Bradburn office, and found him several unfinished case-histories to apply himself to. This made it difficult for him to attend to one or two unpublicized odd jobs that Mosley had deputed to him, but once he was away from HQ, he settled his own priorities. He had to go and see Major Hindle, for example, to find out from him, discreetly but categorically, by what route he had walked to and from the Old Tollhouse on his obliging visits to Mrs. Cater. And Mosley had told him that he could ring up Deirdre Harrison about anything he liked.
Mosley got up early to begin his day of rest and went first to Pringle, to call in the offices of Flavour Controls, Ltd., where he asked for the favour of a little of their chief research chemist’s time.
“I need something in a hurry that would be irresistible to a lap-dog,” Mosley said.
“A lap?” Bexwell suggested.
“Something that would over-ride any other consideration in the creature’s mind.”
Bexwell looked at Mosley through narrowed eyes.
“Are you trying to get us under the Noxious Substances Act?”
“I have no reason to suppose—”
“We have an organic compound, which has passed its clinical trials, and which we had hoped to market as a means
of persuading lost animals to return home. We have however run into snags. Our solicitors have warned us that unscrupulous lonely ladies might use the tincture to teach their pets to find hyper-sensitive zones. Obviously we do not wish to be sued for unforeseen consequences—”
“I am not a lonely lady,” Mosley said. “There is no danger that you will corrupt or deprave me. I take it you could supply me with a working quantity in double, possibly treble strength?”
“A working quantity? That depends on what work you have in mind.”
But Mosley was not to be drawn on that—and was persuasive enough to come away with half a litre. He then found a workable combination of local trains that took him into Manchester, where he went to the offices of the Morning Herald. Here he had to do a great deal of waiting, for which his silent patience stood him in good stead. What he had to ask was found at first less than credible, then contrary to the policies of the paper—and then beyond the permitted decision of their Northern Editor. There was a telephone call to London, but the Editor-in-Chief had already left by air to preside over tonight’s test of witchcraft. Mosley came away with no decision reached but sympathetic consideration promised. He got back to Upper Marldale only just in time to dead-heat with the AC(T)’s arrival at his briefing lectern.
“Our main trouble is going to be with crowds, but I propose to use the problem to provide its own solution. Thanks to the publicity given by the media, people are going to flock to Marldale, and it would be disastrous to deny access to the Queen’s Highways in a free democracy.”
“Even in the interests of public safety?” someone asked.
“The interests of public safety would not be helped by a wave of anti-police animus. On the other hand, there is bound to be some pretty bad driving. The approach roads to Marldale, even along their better stretches, are appalling, and one of my senior colleagues from Traffic has undertaken that they will all be blocked by natural contingencies before dusk: wheels over the edge, a contra-flow of heavy-goods vehicles, an articulated jack-knifed across a narrow bridge. It will be chaos. The public will not be able to complain that they do not have access—but few will get through.”
Mists Over Mosley Page 18