Underneath The Arches

by Graham Ison

  Toni Foster looked surprised that Fox had known her name. ‘I’m afraid Mr Hayden’s engaged at the moment,’ she said. ‘He’s got the chief security officer with him.’

  ‘How very appropriate,’ said Fox and pushed open the door leading to the inner office. Hayden was sitting in one of the leather settees, opposite John Hooper. ‘Er, what —’

  ‘Morning,’ said Fox, and glancing at Hooper, added, ‘Morning, John.’

  ‘Hallo, guv,’ said Hooper. He knew from years of experience that something was up. After Hayden had told him of Fox’s raid at Epsom and the seizure of the charity’s books, he had been expecting the arrival of the head of the Flying Squad. He knew Tommy Fox’s style.

  Hayden stood up. ‘I was talking to my chief security officer,’ he said, ‘but if it’s something urgent, I can —’

  ‘Frederick Hayden, I have a warrant for your arrest on charges of securing gains by making unwarranted demands with menaces, and of conspiring with others to handle stolen property. Anything you say will be given in evidence. Want to put your coat on?’

  Hayden stood in stunned silence, his face white. ‘There must be some mistake,’ he stuttered.

  Fox smiled and shook his head. ‘I don’t make mistakes of that sort, Mr Hayden,’ he said. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘Er, I need to telephone my solicitor.’ Hayden’s hands flapped indecisively in front of him.

  ‘By all means,’ said Fox. ‘When we get to the police station.’ He turned to Hooper. ‘See you around, John.’

  As the two police officers and Hayden passed through Toni Foster’s office, Fox glanced at her. ‘I should cancel all Mr Hayden’s appointments for today,’ he said. ‘He’s just been arrested.’

  ‘Of course, Mr Fox,’ said the secretary and smiled. Vindictively.

  *

  In accordance with standard practice, Hayden’s particulars were recorded by the custody sergeant at Charing Cross Police Station and his photograph and fingerprints were taken.

  ‘Are you going to interview him, guv’nor?’ asked Gilroy.

  ‘I suppose so, Jack,’ said Fox. ‘It’ll probably be a waste of time, but we might just glean something from what his brief says. Most lawyers I’ve met love the sound of their own voice.’

  The distraught figure of Freddie Hayden was slumped in a chair next to his solicitor in the interview room.

  Fox made a big thing of shaking hands with the solicitor. ‘Didn’t expect to meet you again so soon,’ he said.

  ‘What are these preposterous charges upon which you’ve arrested my client, Mr Fox?’ asked the lawyer.

  ‘He was told at the time, of course,’ said Fox, ‘but this is a copy of the charges which will be preferred against him.’ He laid a flimsy sheet of paper on the table.

  The solicitor scanned the charges with an expert eye. ‘Making demands with menaces? Conspiring to handle stolen property?’ He threw the paper on to the table. ‘This is absolutely ludicrous,’ he said. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that a man of Mr Hayden’s standing would trade in stolen property?’

  ‘The facts of the matter,’ said Fox, ‘are that when we raided the depot at Epsom, stolen property was found. We have further substantial evidence from a number of witnesses connecting Mr Hayden with that property.’

  ‘Who are these witnesses?’

  ‘They are being considered as co-conspirators at the moment —’ began Fox.

  ‘That’s not good enough,’ said the lawyer. ‘The evidence of one co-conspirator against —’

  Fox held up his hand. ‘I know all about that,’ he said, ‘but one of the witnesses may turn Queen’s Evidence, and there is some technical evidence, namely tape-recorded conversations between Mr Hayden and that witness.’

  ‘What is this evidence? The defence are entitled to —’

  Again Fox interrupted. ‘I know that too,’ he said. ‘But that is a matter between your counsel and counsel for the Crown.’

  ‘I didn’t know that any of that property was stolen.’ Hayden suddenly sat up and joined in the conversation.

  The solicitor leaned across and placed a hand on Hayden’s arm. ‘It would be most unwise of you to say anything at this stage, Freddie,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you’re not just going to let this bloody man charge me, are you?’

  ‘It’s the only way, Freddie. We’ll get the best counsel and I doubt that this will even get past the examining magistrate.’

  ‘I didn’t know that Dawes was dealing in stolen property,’ blurted out Hayden.

  ‘Who mentioned anything about Dawes?’ asked Fox softly.

  ‘My client declines to answer any questions,’ said the solicitor.

  ‘Don’t blame him,’ said Fox.

  *

  ‘This is Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Fox … of the Flying Squad,’ said Fox, when the assistant secretary in charge of the Police Department at the Home Office answered the phone.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Fox. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I have this day arrested a Mr Frederick Hayden, who is the head of the Hayden Trust charity, among other things,’ said Fox airily.

  ‘Oh, really?’ said the Home Office official, wondering why a senior Scotland Yard detective was bothering him with this trivia.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ said Fox. ‘For making demands with menaces and conspiring to handle stolen property.’

  ‘Well I’m sure that’s all very interesting, Mr Fox, but I have to say that I’m a little baffled as to why you should be telling me this.’

  ‘You will be getting a full written report about it in due course, naturally,’ continued Fox, ‘but I have reason to believe that the Honours Office at 10 Downing Street will be passionately interested in this crumb of information.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ said the assistant secretary, as the purpose of Fox’s call started to become clear. ‘Er, what made you think that they might wish to know, as a matter of interest?’

  ‘I have very good informants,’ said Fox.

  *

  An unshaven Harry Dawes shuffled into the interview room at Charing Cross Police Station. His night in the cells appeared to have aged him considerably, but Fox was in no mood to commiserate.

  ‘Afternoon, Harry. Have a good lunch, did you?’

  ‘This is all a stitch-up,’ said Dawes. ‘It’s all because I made that complaint about you, isn’t it? You’re getting your own back.’

  ‘What complaint was that, Harry?’ asked Fox, flicking the seat of his chair with a clean handkerchief before sitting down.

  ‘About you harassing me with all them coppers hanging about outside my house.’

  ‘Oh that! Yes, I remember there was something about that. But you see, Harry, I explained that they were there to protect you. After we started arresting your little friends, I feared that someone might have tried to get at you. My superiors quite understood.’

  Dawes looked at Fox with an expression of disgust on his face. ‘A bleedin’ whitewash, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly so, Harry.’ Fox smiled compassionately at the ageing fence. ‘However, Harry, I haven’t come all the way from Scotland Yard to discuss your welfare and safety.’

  ‘Didn’t think you bleedin’ had,’ muttered Dawes.

  ‘We have a lot to talk about,’ continued Fox. ‘Not least of which is a number of robberies in diverse places and the disposal of the proceeds thereof by way of your various outlets.’ Fox grinned. ‘Among which were your slaughters at Lambeth, Croydon and Hounslow.’

  ‘They was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘The so-called managing director of the set-up at Hounslow, which had the impudence to call itself Carmody Trading Ltd, was one Vincent Carmody —’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ said Dawes automatically.

  ‘Who, my surveillance officers tell me, visited your premises at Oxford Road on numerous occasions.’ Fox thumbed the edge of the pile of files in front of him. ‘I can give you dates and times, if you like. But there wouldn
’t be a great deal of point in that, would there, Harry. You were in every time he came to see you. Incidentally, he said that you serve bloody awful sherry.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with my sherry,’ said Dawes with a flash of anger. ‘It’s just that Vince doesn’t appreciate a good Manzanilla when he sees one. He’s not an athlete, you see.’

  ‘An athlete? What the hell’s athletics got to do with sherry?’

  ‘You know,’ said Dawes. ‘Someone what appreciates the finer things in life.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Fox, ‘you mean an aesthete. However, Harry, we’re not getting very far, are we? Having established, by your own admission, that you knew Vincent Carmody, I have to tell you that he’s put everything down to you.’

  ‘But I never —’

  ‘He actually called you the mastermind, Harry. Great compliment that, don’t you think?’

  ‘He’s trying to stitch me up, that’s what he’s trying to do.’

  ‘Then we come to the question of the Hayden Trust.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Dawes’s head jerked up.

  ‘Ah, I see you’ve heard of it.’

  ‘No I ain’t.’

  Fox grinned. ‘I can understand your saying that, Harry. It’s a charity, and charity’s not exactly your line of business, is it? On the other hand,’ Fox went on, ‘there have been some nasty allegations made about you in connection with the said charity.’ He opened one of the files in front of him. ‘In short, Mr Hayden has put it all down to you. He says that he didn’t know that the gear was nicked. I got the impression that he thought you’d had him over.’

  ‘The saucy bastard.’ Dawes was clearly outraged by this latest piece of what he regarded as malicious testimony. ‘Course he bloody knew it was bent.’

  Fox shook his head slowly. ‘Things aren’t looking too good, Harry,’ he said. ‘His mouthpiece is, at this very moment, on the trumpet drumming up the finest silk that money can buy to defend Mr Hayden, and knowing the ways of the criminal bar, I should say that he had a very good chance of succeeding.’

  Dawes’s head sunk onto his chest in an attitude of deep contemplation. ‘You haven’t got a fag, Mr Fox, have you?’ he asked a moment later.

  Fox slid his cigarette case across the bare Formica-topped table. ‘Help yourself, Harry.’

  Dawes took a cigarette and accepted a light. Then he leaned back in his chair and studied Fox for a while, as though assessing how far he could go. Making up his mind, he drew hard on his cigarette and leaned forward again. ‘I’ve got something to tell you, Mr Fox,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to know what consideration I’ll get for it.’

  ‘Depends what it is, Harry. In short though, if you turn Queen’s Evidence and they don’t believe you, you’ll go down for a fair old stretch.’ It always grieved Fox to have to tell prisoners that. ‘On the other hand, I can discuss it with the Crown Prosecution Service who might be prepared to come to some sort of arrangement. That’s probably getting the best of both worlds, if you see what I mean.’

  Dawes digested this crumb of not very encouraging information in silence. ‘All right then,’ he said at length. ‘The murder of that girl is down to Hayden.’

  ‘Really? Don’t push your luck too far, Harry.’

  ‘Stand on me, Mr Fox. It’s the God’s honest truth.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to need more than that, Harry.’ Fox took a cigarette from his open case.

  ‘That night, when it happened, I got a call from Hayden. He was in a blind panic. Screaming down the phone he was. Said he’d just topped this girl and that he had to get rid of the body, fast.’

  ‘So you popped round to his drum, collected the body and banged it in your lock-up at Lambeth to await disposal, is that it?’ Fox gazed at Dawes with a cynical expression of disbelief on his face. ‘Why should I believe that out of the goodness of your heart, you helped him out? Why didn’t you adopt your usual ploy of telling him to drop dead?’

  ‘Because she was blackmailing him, the prat.’

  ‘What had that got to do with you, Harry?’

  ‘Well, I was in on it an’ all, wasn’t I?’

  ‘In on what? The murder?’

  ‘Nah! What happened was that he’d picked up with this bird. Reckoned he’d met her at some party. Anyhow, they starts having it off on a regular basis, see, and she wheedles it all out of him, don’t she … about this charity. And he reckoned he’d told her about me an’ all. Pillow talk, I s’pose.’

  ‘And you believed this?’ Fox was genuinely surprised that Dawes appeared to have been taken in by Hayden’s tale.

  ‘Not totally, no. But Hayden said that if I didn’t help him out he’d grass me up. Said that he was very influential. Banged on about going to garden parties at Buckingham Palace and hob-nobbing with the Queen. He said that everybody’d believe him and that I’d finish up in stir, but if I done the business, he’d stay shtum.’

  ‘Where did you collect Dawn Sims’s body from, Harry?’

  ‘One of them mews places down Pimlico,’ said Dawes.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘How could you have collected a body from there if you don’t know where it is?’ Fox was beginning to doubt Dawes’s story and wondered why he was telling it; it seemed a strange and unsuitable way for him to exact revenge on Hayden.

  ‘Well, I did at the time like, but I’ve forgotten now. I could take you there, though, Mr Fox.’

  ‘Go on, Harry.’

  ‘Well, like I said, I got this phone call from Hayden. Must have been about eight o’clock on the Sunday evening. So I gave Vince a bell and he brought the transit round and we went down this mews place. It was dark and there wasn’t no one about, so we banged the body in the van and took it down Lambeth. I thought it’d be all right there until we could do a proper job getting rid of it. But then you bleedin’ lot turned up next morning.’ Dawes sighed at the injustice of it all.

  *

  It was nearing eight o’clock in the evening and snowing steadily when Dawes led the police to a tiny mews in Pimlico. ‘That’s the one,’ he said, pointing to a red door.

  Swann, still grumbling, opened the door with the minimum of trouble and Fox led Gilroy and a team of scenes-of-crime officers into the small sitting-room on the first floor. It was comfortably furnished and the only indication of violent crime was an overturned table and a smashed lamp. It appeared that Hayden had not visited the place again since the night of the murder.

  ‘Right, lads,’ said Fox to the scenes-of-crime men, ‘get to it.’

  *

  As a result of Dawes’s statement to the police, Fox had decided not to charge Hayden with the other offences immediately, despite the protests of his solicitor, and had ordered that he be held in custody overnight.

  The following day, Hayden’s solicitor arrived early at Charing Cross Police Station so that he could be present when Hayden was charged and then taken to the nearby Bow Street magistrates court.

  But Fox had been busier than the lawyer.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked the solicitor when Hayden was brought in to the interview room once again. ‘You must either charge my client or release him.’

  ‘I intend to ask him some questions,’ said Fox. ‘Well, one question actually.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘Don’t presume to give me a lecture about what I may or may not ask a prisoner,’ said Fox, and nodding to Gilroy to turn on the recording machine, administered the formal caution. ‘Mr Hayden, are you the owner or lessee of a mews property in Pimlico known as —’

  ‘My client declines to answer the question,’ said the solicitor sharply.

  ‘No I don’t,’ said Hayden. He looked to Fox, a pathetic expression on his face. ‘Yes, I do own that property.’

  ‘An examination of that property, carried out during the night, reveals that your fingerprints and those of Lady Dawn Sims were found there. We have also compared your fingerprints with certain marks found at her fl
at in Edgware Road and have identified them as yours, despite your having denied ever having been there.’

  ‘I know,’ said Hayden. Head bowed, his hands were linked together on the table in front of him, fingers fiercely intertwined. Then he looked up. ‘I killed her,’ he said.

  ‘For God’s sake, Freddie,’ said the solicitor. ‘Don’t say any more.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Hayden. ‘I want to tell Mr Fox all about it.’

  ‘I repeat that you are not obliged —’ began Fox.

  Hayden held up a hand. ‘I know, I know,’ he said, his voice croaking with strain. ‘I was a fool. I was captivated by that girl. At first, she was so warm and understanding and I thought that I might get something out of life that has escaped me all these years. But I didn’t know it would turn out the way it did. You see, Mr Fox, I was foolish enough to think that she loved me, and that if I divorced Tessa, Dawn would marry me. In the beginning, I was silly enough to think that she might be impressed by the title I was going to get. Then, of course, I found out that she was a lady in her own right, and that such things meant nothing to her. But she was only after my money.’ He stared at Fox, willing him to understand the frailties of man. ‘Then she started blackmailing me.’

  ‘How?’ asked Fox.

  ‘Photographs.’ Hayden hung his head.

  ‘What sort of photographs?’

  Hayden gave Fox a pathetic glance, as though the policeman should have known. ‘Of Dawn and me … in bed together.’

  Fox’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who took them, d’you know?’

  ‘Her boyfriend. He appeared in the bedroom at Edgware Road one night. The first I knew was when a flash-bulb went off.’

  ‘What was this man’s name, My Hayden?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Dawn wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘Mr Hayden,’ said Fox, ‘I don’t understand why that should have made you susceptible to blackmail? Just now, you said that you were contemplating divorcing Mrs Hayden in order to marry Dawn Sims. So why should the photographs have been a potential embarrassment?’

  ‘Because she said that the other photographs would be sent to my wife as well.’ Hayden suddenly seemed to be about ten years older. ‘And not only to my wife, but to anyone who knew me for my charitable works.’