Corpse (Commander Shaw Book 15)

by Philip McCutchan

  She said, “It’s the public that’s going to be the final arbiter, isn’t it?”

  I knew what she meant. “Dead right,” I said. “Once the news leaks, and it will … that’s when the trouble starts.”

  “Which is maybe what CORPSE are banking on?”

  I nodded, braked hard behind a pantechnicon: I was becoming allergic to being behind pantechnicons. “Could be. We’ll have something like a revolution on our hands even before they come. All the extremists, both sides, making hay. In a sense, doing CORPSE’S job in advance … softening up the ground. They’ll hardly need the threat, just the threat of the threat could be enough.”

  She sat in silence after that, her face troubled. I sensed the way her thoughts were going, along the same lines as mine. Internally the country would face all manner of strains that would lead to a slowing down of production and a disruption of normal life: everyone would march and demonstrate, and strike, demanding this, that and the other. Striking was today’s panacea: you struck because some country over which Britain had no control did something you didn’t like, you struck because the police were too efficient and nabbed your mates, you struck because other trades struck and affected your pocket, you struck because you might soon be out of work. Why not strike against CORPSE? CORPSE would come to life with a great big belly-laugh and pass a vote of thanks at the next committee meeting, but at least you would have shown you didn’t approve of being scattered piecemeal in a nuclear holocaust … as we came once again to the A1. I pondered on the viability of CORPSE’S plans to take over Britain. It all sounded basically crazy, but it could happen. CORPSE had the whole thing taped from A to Z, as I’d said to Max. That corps of leadership was ready and waiting, with the strong-arm squads ready beside them. A number were in situ already, according to CORPSE. Many more were on their way in, using all conceivable methods of entry I assumed: it was difficult to watch the whole of Britain’s coast-line all the time. Even the official modes of entry … Immigration would be more than ever alert at the ports and airports but it would still be child’s play for determined persons to get past them. After the first attack — after the blast had happened — the tame gauleiters already here would most likely take over the RSGs, the Regional Seats of Government scattered about the country for use in a nuclear war. Of these, the London area had five: in Bexley, Sutton, Redbridge, Enfield and Hillingdon, the latter being beneath the new civic centre as was the Redbridge one. Naturally, they would be strongly defended but CORPSE could be presumed to have taken care of that. The defence would have been pre-softened by the panic situation. Massive explosions in the Thames, in Liverpool, in Hull and Southampton, say, would have a pretty poor effect on morale.

  *

  This time we made the Adger-Craby complex in daylight. An appointment with the brass had been fixed ahead for me. My interest lay in Chartner. Why had he been the target for the attentions of CORPSE? (I’d asked that whilst underground below the warehouse, but the question had remained unanswered.) One of the top men at Corby had known Chartner well. A personal friendship had developed as a result of business meetings. He said Chartner had been a passionate believer in democracy and had deplored the emergence in recent years of extreme groups that were gradually eroding the basis of parliamentary government. He had become almost neurotic about it, in fact, and it was because he had seen the hand of militant extremism emerging for the nth time in the Corby dispute that he had come in person to try to sort it out. My informant made the point himself that someone could have had a vested interest in ensuring that conciliation did not come about, though murder was a pretty extreme measure and could only have a short-term effect in any case.

  “Pour encourager les autres?” I suggested. “Mediators might get short on the ground if enough were killed.”

  “I doubt the proposition. Commander.”

  I didn’t myself: but I let the point pass. The assembled management impressed on me the vital importance of maintaining chemical production. Adger-Craby, it seemed, produced just about everything British industry needed in chemicals to keep going at all. They hadn’t been in Corby long, but they were the biggest plant in Britain including even BP; and strikes both official and unofficial were turning the Board grey. I asked, why the redundancies?

  “Over-manning,” was the brief answer.

  “Union inspired in the first place?”

  “Yes. Now we need, really need, to shed the fat.”

  “Going back on agreements?”

  There was a flush. “Certainly not. We’re trying to reach agreement, but there’s no co-operation — just strikes and walkouts. The run-down of British Steel hasn’t helped.”

  I could well see that. Most of British industry was in a state of morbidity and every job lost looked like one gone for ever. But those strikes: as the man went on I began to form the impression that CORPSE had already started its work and that the killer organisation could well have been the agents provocateur behind any amount of industrial trouble. We tend to blame the communists; that easy blame could have proved a very handy smokescreen for CORPSE. In the meantime it seemed to me that Chartner had been simply the victim of his own anti-extreme obsession, a first blow by CORPSE to show Britain that it meant what it was about to say. In a sense, I was more intrigued by the girl’s murder. When I left Corby I drove with Miss Mandrake to Peterborough nick and found they had just contacted FH and tried to reach me at Corby, asking me to report. An identification had been made and it was a weird one: the girl’s name had been Sandra Shingler, British; but she had lived in Spain the last year or two and had acquired, on account of a liking for sherry, the sobriquet of La Ina. Here came the weird part: sherry drinker or no, she had taken an interest, and more than an interest, in a crazy offshoot of the Protestant religion operating under disadvantages in Catholic Spain — a sect that called themselves the Flood Fearers. Peterborough police, in the person of the Superintendent who was giving me the information personally, knew no more about them than this. Except to tell me that La Ina had been drummed out by the ordinary members of the sect — this being why she’d returned to Britain — because she had become the mistress of the pastor.

  I grinned. “That’s what you mean by taking more than an interest?”

  “Right. In case it’s of use, the name of the pastor is … ” The Superintendent ran a finger down the identity report. “The Reverend, which may or may not mean anything. Clay Petersen.” He looked up. “Does it help?”

  “No,” I said. “Nationality?”

  “US citizen.”

  “What else?” I asked rhetorically. I’d once heard coffins advertised, or I think they called them caskets, on US radio at 0600 hours. A glowing tribute to comfort, and it had been followed by a man who called for three radio cheers for the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he’d met in person. I was willing to believe anything of American religion. The Flood Fearers sounded akin to the Flat Earthers. I asked, “Would you be willing to tell me how you came by this identification and the other information?”

  “I was coming to that,” the police chief said. “A phone call came in … a man’s voice that said he had something to impart … a known snout, as a matter of fact, by the name of Flash a nasty little creep but harmless. Anyway, a meeting was arranged in Kettering, a Wimpy bar. Flash turned up and gave my DS an address where we would find the dead girl’s sister. Flash isn’t known to the family and he’s not involved beyond the fact he had kept his eyes and ears open as usual in the interest of getting a fiver from police funds … my DS went into him deep on this occasion.”

  “And the sister? You found her?”

  The Superintendent nodded. “In a way she seemed relieved to talk, according to my DS. Relieved that it was over … initially she hadn’t wanted to make the identification — and, of course, didn’t.” “Why not?” I asked. “Did that emerge?”

  “She refused to say,” the Superintendent answered, frowning. “My DS didn’t press it. He had orders to play it cool. Reason: b
efore Flash’s call came in. I’d had certain messages from my Chief Constable, who’d had them from London. I dare say you’ll understand.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I decided in all the circumstances that you’d prefer it if I left it largely up to you to take further if you wished.”

  I said with gratitude, ‘Thanks. That’s great.” Miss Mandrake and I left the nick with the sister’s address and directions as to how to find it. I found a car park on some waste ground and walked through to a street the other side of the public library, leaving Miss Mandrake in the car. I didn’t want to scare the sister from the word go by arriving like a posse. When I rang the bell it was a long while before it was answered, and I was aware I was being studied from an upstairs window. Then the door was opened on a chain and a man’s voice — the husband, as I’d been told to expect — asked if I was the police again.

  “Not police,” I said. I’m from London and my name’s Shaw.” I handed my identification past the chain.

  The chain came off. The man was in his middle twenties, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. “I was told you might come,” he said diffidently. “Want the wife, do you?”

  “If I may,” I said, and he stepped aside and called “Denise” loudly up the stairs while I walked along a narrow passage to the kitchen at the back. The husband followed me in.

  “I kept telling her,” he said. He looked and sounded thoroughly dejected. “Wasn’t no use, not a bit.”

  “Women,” I murmured, smiling, “can be obstinate.”

  There was a flicker of a grin; he had a decent face behind the anxiety. “Is she going to be in trouble?”

  “Not from me.” I turned as the wife, Denise, came in: she was a wisp of a girl, around nineteen at a-guess, with big eyes, and dead scared, and I could find no likeness to the body, though to do such would perhaps have been difficult after so long in death. I told her my name and said she had nothing to worry about, and that I was immensely sorry for the tragedy. I added, “Try not to worry. It’s not a crime, not to report a relationship.”

  She was on the verge of tears as she said, “I don’t know how the coppers found out, that I don’t.” I didn’t give her any names; Flash’s anonymity had to be respected — the Superintendent, quite unnecessarily really, had insisted on that.

  I said, “Things emerge. Peterborough’s not all that big. Many people must have known, or guessed, from the press reports, surely?”

  “No,” she said. Tears streamed; her husband went to her and put an arm around the thin shoulders. He answered my question:

  “Sandra’d only been here two days. First time she’d been here … Denise used to live in Newcastle.”

  “A long way off,” I agreed pacifically. In Newcastle they wouldn’t be that interested, and of course no photographs had been published any more than the branded CORPSE had been mentioned until Chartner’s wife had been found. “I’m wondering why you didn’t report, that’s all.” Clearly, there was a reason.

  “I kept telling her,” the husband said again. “I didn’t like it all along, honest I didn’t. Blood’s thicker’n water, whatever … ”

  “Whatever what?” I asked. I was wondering if there was some misplaced sense of shame, if, for instance, the late Sandra had been on the game or something up in Newcastle. People do value their reputations, and those of their families rub off. But it was very far from that when, after much patient probing and reassurance, the truth emerged and when it did so it hit me like a bomb. Or a shipload of nuclear waste. And this was it: Sandra had got mixed up in something: they genuinely, I believe, did not know what: but it was nasty and she had been killed because of it. On arrival in Peterborough she’d said she had left Spain because ‘they’ were out to get her. No clues as to who ‘they’ might be. She had felt sort of secure in Peterborough, but the security had been more apparent than real as it turned out. The night she reached her sister’s home she had been in a very bad state, nervy and crying, and she had said that her sister and brother-in-law must never admit she’d been there, or that she’d told them anything about Spain, because if they did, then ‘they’ would get them too. Or anyway, one man in particular would. She had come out with the name before she’d realised, and the name was Polecat Brennan, and the name of Polecat Brennan, so called because he had a vicious nature and a foul temper, was one that came back to me from years past amid best forgotten memories of spilled blood and violent upheaval and threat to world peace and stability. Polecat Brennan, it seemed, had come from Spain in pursuit of La Ina. It was a fair bet he’d gone back to Spain again by now, that in the interval he’d done his dirty deed on the girl.

  There was one thing that didn’t check in my mind: Polecat Brennan had been a member of WUSWIPP, one of the strong-arm mob that largely saw to WUSWIPP’s killing duties. I wondered how it came about that he’d used the CORPSE brand mark.

  I left that sad little house, found a call-box and rang the nick, suggesting they put a watch on the sister and her husband, partly to see what turned up and partly for the couple’s protection in case my visit had been noted. I said nothing about Polecat Brennan or about what I’d been told of the murdered girl. I hadn’t promised not to, but I knew that was what that couple would have wanted. Also, I meant to get on the Brennan trail myself, untrammelled by the police. Therefore I cut the call when the questions got close. Of course, the killer didn’t have to be Brennan, but those two people had managed to convince me that it had been despite the use of the brand mark. Going back to the car park, I orientated myself mentally towards Spain: I saw a connection with the Flood Fearers, however vague — or maybe not a connection exactly, but a link that could put me headed in the right direction. Sandra Shingler had been my lead-in to all this and I felt strongly that she was going to provide a lead-on for the future, especially, of course, since Polecat Brennan had entered the canvas.

  It was dark by now, and some rain was falling, a miserable night. There were few cars parked, but a Dormobile with drawn curtains had come up near the Mercedes. I approached from the back of the Merc and saw the headrests of the front seats silhouetted against street lamps and hiding the outlines of Miss Mandrake’s head. So I thought. When I got alongside and bent to open the door I saw she wasn’t there. Gone to spend a penny most likely. I started to get behind the wheel and something took me hard on the back of the head though I hadn’t heard or seen anything moving. I knew nothing more for a while and when I came round, which must have been in a matter of minutes, I was in the back of a moving vehicle, the Dormobile I’d seen on entering the car park. Miss Mandrake was sitting white-faced and bleeding on one of the seats, and beyond the curtains was a fiery glow. A man holding a gun jerked a corner of one of the curtains aside briefly and I saw the source of the fire: the Mercedes, no doubt with a petrol can upended over the cushions. The effing firm had lost another car … and I was making a habit, it seemed, of being hooked away in alien vehicles.

  But this time it wasn’t CORPSE: as my head began to clear I recognised the man with the gun. He’d aged, but he was Polecat Brennan.

  FOUR

  No one spoke: questions met with a nudge from Brennan’s gun. and an order to shut up. There were two other men aboard besides Brennan and the driver, and they all had automatics handy. Nothing that tallied with the Hammerli that was believed to have killed La Ina. We drove out of Peterborough heading north then east: through the windscreen I picked up the road signs for Wisbech. Flat fen country interspersed with dykes came up in the headlights: it looked unbelievably dreary and menacing beneath the drizzle. We passed through Thorney, Guyhirn, Wisbech and I guessed we were heading for King’s Lynn and a boat out of the country. But we by-passed King’s Lynn and headed north up the A149 alongside the Wash and all the sandburied golden treasure left behind by King John when the racing tide had swept in centuries before. Not far from the royal retreat at Sandringham we turned off left, and after driving a little farther, towards the water, the Dormobile stopped. Miss Mandrake a
nd I were told to get out, which we did, and Brennan and the other two men accompanied us. The Dormobile drove away and we walked, coming down to wide sands as we left the metalled road. The rain continued, and there was some wind that blew it into our faces. It was a depressing progress. Soon I saw a rowing boat drawn up on the sand, just clear of the sea: it was, by the look of it, high water and soon, when the stage of slack water passed, the tide would be ripping out to sea. Two men waited by the boat with wet-weather gear drawn tight all round them. Brennan went ahead and made contact, then we all joined forces, still no word said. The boat was pushed off the sand and we piled in under the guns. I was watching for the right moment and I knew Felicity would be too, but it didn’t come: the guard was much too tightly kept. We sat on the centre thwart with Brennan and one man behind us, the other man in front, while the crew pulled away from the shore. They had a heavy passenger load to haul but it was not difficult as the tide began its rush for the open sea and bore us along swiftly. It was really incredible just how fast that tide moved, how quickly the whole Wash began to empty. It was not long before we were beyond its confines, past a line drawn from Gore Point to Skegness, and beginning to come up towards the Burnham Flats. Seaward of the Flats a ship was sighted, making way through the water slowly. Up in the bows of our boat one of the Brennan gang briefly showed a torch towards the ship. There was no visual response, but the vessel’s silhouette changed shape as she altered course for us. The rowers carried on rowing: obviously, the sooner the transfer could be made, the safer Brennan’s mob would be. They wouldn’t be wanting any interference from the shore if anything untoward should be noticed which I had to admit was unlikely if all went smoothly.