The Drowned Man

by David Whellams

  “And why are these letters so valuable to Hilfgott? More important, are they really historically significant?”

  Bartleben sighed. “I don’t know, but Hilfgott and our Heritage friends say they are, and now the documents have disappeared.”

  Peter’s antennae detected Nicola Hilfgott’s agenda. A pampered diplomat with a hobby had paid $10,000, likely her own money, for documents that Peter gave even odds were forgeries. He suspected that senior people were already considering ways to push young Carpenter’s death to the background. The murder would be left to the locals but the theft of the letters, even if they were forgeries, was shaping up to be an embarrassment for the British government. Bartleben wanted his own man in Montreal, not only to retrieve the body but also to sound out local police on their progress in the murder investigation. Fair enough, Peter thought, but the boss would also expect him to size up the errant consul general while in Canada. No thanks, Peter repeated to himself. Let the Serious Fraud Office deal with the letters. Obviously Stephen coveted the assignment, otherwise the SFO would already be working the file. He grunted and recalculated the odds of forgery at eighty-twenty.

  Peter remained resolute. And where the Booth saga might once have captivated him, in his current mood it seemed a dry and faded drama.

  Bartleben was thinking along the same lines, for he said, “Why anyone cares about such a long-gone sideshow to a long-ago war is beyond me.”

  Peter could see no plusses for Bartleben in any of this, no career glory, and that in itself intrigued him. The wise move was to let Frank Counter handle his own mess with the ample resources of Special Projects, whatever that was.

  “The letters have vanished?” Peter said.

  Bartleben nodded. “And now young Carpenter is dead. Murdered.”

  Noyé, Peter might have added.

  Both men settled into silence again. It was Bartleben’s move.

  “Okay, Peter,” he said, “there’s a small obstacle to bringing the body home efficiently. The corpse, which has been embalmed and prepped, has been cleared for shipment back to Heathrow as early as the day after tomorrow. As you know, protocol requires someone be on the plane carrying the coffin. Whoever goes over should touch base with the police in Montreal, a courtesy call only.”

  “Why can’t a member of Carpenter’s family do the shipping?” It was a painful trip for any loved one but that was the typical arrangement. Alternatively, the family hired an international funeral service to transfer the body.

  Peter expected the usual speech about shepherding the fallen comrade home but instead Bartleben replied, “The family is agitated. They question why it’s taking us so long to bring their son home.”

  “What do they expect?” Peter said.

  “There’s a mother and a sister but the brother is the volatile one. He still lives in the family’s hometown, a village called New Bosk up in Lincolnshire. He’s threatening to sue us, though Lord knows for what. He wants to be the one to accompany the body to England.”

  “Then let him.”

  “No.”

  Peter stared across the desk. Bartleben wanted too much. He was holding back important details of the case, Peter was sure, yet he expected full cooperation. Peter knew the boss well. His clipped and reluctant answers told Peter that a scandal was about to metastasize. The bottom line remained the same: Peter didn’t want the work.

  “What do you expect from me, Stephen?”

  “I’d like you to talk him out of it.”

  Sir Stephen sat back in his throne-like chair. His approach had been deliberately crude, disclosing just enough to make Peter contemplate the obvious questions. Why, for example, hadn’t Nicola Hilfgott been recalled from her Montreal posting? And who had granted young Carpenter the time to fly to Canada for such frivolous reasons?

  But Peter didn’t voice those questions. In his morbid state, his brother’s ghost haunting his skull, he fixed on a different worry: Who from the Yard will speak at John Carpenter’s funeral?

  “Do you have a room I could use?” Peter said.

  “Yes. Basil Wilton’s office is free, he’s on holiday. Down the end of the hall.”

  An hour later Cammon came back to Stephen’s sanctum.

  “Okay, I’ll drive up to Lincolnshire and see the family. But I won’t go to Montreal.”

  Sir Stephen nodded and Peter left. Sir Stephen picked up the little glass-domed souvenir, turned it upside-down and back again, and watched the swirling Peruvian snow.

  CHAPTER 2

  Bartleben’s strategy had failed to tip the balance. Peter left the big office still determined not to fly to Montreal, no matter how Sir Stephen tried to cajole or guilt him into it. But Peter would have to tend to a few logistical matters regarding his brief mission to New Bosk, Lincolnshire. With luck, he could get his old partner, Tommy Verden, to drive him up from London in the morning. Peter would stay in town tonight, and he needed to call home to arrange for his wife, Joan, to mind Jasper, the family dog. Finally, he decided to call Frank Counter in Special Projects for some background on John Carpenter. Without being aware of it, Peter had begun to fall back into a detective’s way of thinking.

  Bartleben’s sleek assistant saw him hesitate in the anteroom, and she flashed him a smile in which, had Peter been more attentive to Sir Stephen’s planned seduction (and Peter was always dazzled by beautiful women), he might have read her true motives. She was Sir Stephen’s proxy and knew how to prod Peter’s curiosity. She held out a slip of paper.

  “Are you going to visit Mr. Counter?” she said. “I have his personal number.”

  Peter wasn’t the only one capable of parlour tricks. He smiled back and took the note.

  “He’s not in his office today, or most afternoons,” she continued. “In the far reaches of Whitehall, I believe. The Home Office is a strange world these days.”

  She was alluding to both Bartleben’s and Counter’s current status, Peter knew, although she did not go on to explain Sir Stephen’s role as a floating executive, even though she must know that Peter was curious. The Metropolitan Police organization chart formed a quilt of abstract job titles — Specialist Crime Directorate, Specialist Operations, Counter Terrorism Command. Peter would have been content with everything lumped under an expanded Special Branch, but the bureraucratic universe had been transformed in 2001 because of terrorism. Special Projects had gathered about itself extraordinary resources (which would be sustained at least through the 2012 London Olympics), and had spat out plum assignments for ambitious men like Frank Counter. As for Stephen, he wouldn’t have been the first executive to retire because the organization chart made his eyes ache.

  And so, in part to learn how Counter and Bartleben were placed inside the new Home Office, he made the call.

  “Tell me about Special Projects.”

  They were sitting in a grotty pub called the Feather. Its velvet banquettes and oak tables needed refurbishment but Scotland Yard people were known here, and the proprietor gave them a private booth. There were few other customers. More important to Peter, the pub stocked beers he liked.

  Frank Counter smiled. He was a veteran of the Yard, and although they hadn’t collaborated in more than five years, Peter had worked with him often over the decades. He was fleshy, his face ruddy at the extremities of cheekbones, nose, and fingertips; Peter noted a tremor of his right hand as he raised his glass.

  They had always maintained friendly relations, in part because Frank shared the field experience lacking in Bartleben. Six years from retirement himself, Counter appeared to have fashioned an ideal job for himself.

  “Peter, we’re busier than a regiment of typing chimps.” A touch of defensiveness entered his tone. “It’s the ideal job. We get the cream of the exciting cases. Oh, it’s all political, but it’s an opportunity. Life’s good for career officers like us. My shop’s kind of a flying squad for the hi
gh-profile cases.”

  “Do you have the resources you need for these big investigations?” Peter said blandly.

  Frank smiled again. “Lots. Unless the counter-terrorism people start poaching our funding again.” Frank quickly downed his first pint and prepared to fetch a second. “I understand what you’re coming to, Peter. Where does Bartleben fit in the new groupings? Well, my old friend, he has no mandate at all except what the minister assigns to him. No people and no funding. I don’t report to him.”

  Frank thumped the table and left for the bar, giving Peter time to kill his impulse to respond that Bartleben’s ad hoc mandate sounded precisely like . . . Special Projects.

  Frank returned with two more pints. Peter had been polite but now he wanted to get to the point. “I understand you flew to Montreal about John Carpenter.”

  “Yes. I made contact with an Inspector Deroche of the Quebec police. Spent most of a day with him. Very cooperative and quite eager.”

  “Did you view Carpenter’s body?”

  Frank recoiled; his face turned red. “Oh, no. But I reviewed the pathologist’s photographs. Face was bruised, scarred. Stomach-turning.”

  “The photographs aren’t on Carpenter’s file. Why is that?” Peter said, trying not to be too confrontational.

  “I really don’t know.”

  Bartleben and Counter kept piling up the evasions, Peter thought. Counter was treating this case as a nuisance, but John Carpenter’s murder was too nasty to be glossed over like this. “Who’s the lead suspect?” he said, edgier this time.

  “The book dealer, original owner of the mysterious letters. Name of Leander Greenwell. Deroche has put out a Canada-wide warrant for him.”

  Peter moved to the interesting part of the coroner’s ruling, the dual cause of death. “The report says Carpenter was struck by a hit-and-run driver, then somehow made it to the canal’s edge, fell in, and drowned. How did your inspector explain that?”

  “The driver deliberately ran him down, then Carpenter crawled to the water.”

  “There’s mention by the pathologist who authored the report that a local man, a Professor Renaud, tried to rescue Carpenter in the water. Any chance he took the money or the letters?”

  Counter frowned, as if Peter had posed a flippant question. “Jesus, Peter, you’re pushing a bit hard.”

  Peter continued, “I’ve read Madam Hilfgott’s report but I’m no clearer on why she contacted you in the first place.”

  This was a none too subtle way of asking why Counter had responded to Nicola’s request at all; it could easily have been handled without any Yard involvement. Peter’s instincts told him that Frank should be worried for his career.

  “I know, I know, too much skulduggery. But I confess, it seemed routine. It wasn’t all that much, only ten thousand Canadian dollars. Nicola told me it was a steal, that the three letters were worth much more than that. Archives agreed. That won me over. And the High Commission in Ottawa approved.”

  A pleading look came into his eyes.

  “You realize, Frank, that volunteering our services as, what, couriers or bagmen, immediately shifted the accountability onto us?”

  Counter winced. Peter saw that he had gone too far.

  “Do you believe her?” Peter said. “Are the letters valuable?”

  Counter sipped the head on his beer, as if to fortify himself for the next disclosures. “I know what you’re really asking, Peter. Nicola argued, with some support from Archives, that the letters technically belong to us, since in 1864 Canada was still under British rule and all three letters either derived from, or were sent to, the head of Her Majesty’s Forces in the colony.”

  No wonder Sir Stephen appeared concerned, Peter thought. This was the thinnest legal argument for ownership he had heard in a long time. Sometimes the Mother Country forgot that its former colonies took pride in their heritage, too. At minimum, Peter estimated, Nicola was guilty of receiving stolen goods.

  Counter looked sheepish and quaffed more beer. “How the hell do you explain Nicola Hilfgott? Her older brother and I went to school together, Cambridge, and she kept in touch with me over the years. The call came out of the blue. She wasn’t apologizing for asking my help, she said. Typical Nicola. She said the High Commissioner needed reassurance and could I assist with an officer to make sure everything stayed above board.”

  “Hundred-dollar bills in a brown envelope at midnight?” Peter said.

  Counter grimaced and Peter changed the subject. “What was Carpenter like?”

  “Moderately ambitious and moderately talented,” Counter said. “He was good at his assignments, did a lot of complex customs investigations in his time. I have to say, there was something callow about him. I dunno . . . He had the aura of always wanting to be somewhere else, doing something else. Tended to think too far ahead.”

  “A dreamer?” Peter prompted.

  “An aggressive dreamer, I’d phrase it. Always ambitious for something. Fancied himself a ladies’ man, too.”

  “Why did you pick him?”

  “Ah, Jesus. I scouted around my group and he simply volunteered. He asked for two weeks’ vacation while he was in Canada, and frankly, no one else wanted the job.”

  Echoes of Bartleben, Peter thought.

  “But you said, Frank, that you’re bustling with work. Carpenter wasn’t in Customs anymore, was he? What files was he on?”

  Counter sat back and stared into his glass. “We seconded him to my group from Customs a year ago. Carpenter was on the task force looking at the alleged tapping of cell phones and text messages by the News of the World. The hacking scandal. You read about that one?”

  “I’m retired, not brain-dead,” Peter fired back.

  Counter looked startled, but proceeded. “You read, then, the allegations in the Guardian of massive phone-hacking of British nationals by Rupert Murdoch’s people.”

  Those British nationals had included the royal family. Peter stared coldly into Counter’s bleary eyes. “Did Carpenter work full-time on the hacking dossier?”

  “Let me catch up,” Counter said. “The Commissioner of the Met, that was a year ago, publicly declined to relaunch the investigation.”

  “And now we’re about to pay the price of procrastination?” Peter suggested.

  Frank Counter wiped sweat from his hairline.

  “The Guardian was right,” he continued. “There were thousands of incidents. Celebrities, crime victims, the royal household, maybe even Prince Harry. Peter, we expect the House of Commons will announce a formal parliamentary inquiry sometime in the next six months. The mandate will encompass the Yard’s conduct in this matter and its cozy dealings with News staff. The Commissioner could look like a fool.”

  Peter had a sudden thought. The hacking allegations weren’t new. Why hadn’t Sir Stephen borne the brunt of the cock-ups back then? He had detected no unease from Bartleben that afternoon. “Tell me, Frank, why hasn’t Sir Stephen been tainted by this?”

  Frank shook his head in grudging admiration for Sir Stephen. “Bartleben was lucky. Some time ago, the powers that be decided to assign the hacking investigation to Counter Terrorism. CT! Lord knows why. That suited me fine, Stephen too. CT was glomming onto all the resources anyway. But then, for equally obscure reasons, they shifted the hacking business back to my unit, and it’s all landed on my shoulders. Sir Stephen dodged all responsibility.”

  Peter understood it was more than luck that had saved Sir Stephen. The boss was a master at bureaucratic games.

  Frank continued. “If they do a parliamentary inquiry it will keep me fully occupied for the next year or more. That’s why I can’t spare an officer for Montreal now.”

  “But you could spare Carpenter. I’m confused,” Peter said.

  “That’s a huge irony. While the hacking scandal was over at Counter Terrorism, John Ca
rpenter served as our liaison. But frankly he wasn’t all that busy. We were all waiting for the techies to process more of the taps.”

  Peter could sense Frank rehearsing his testimony before the Commons committee.

  “In fact,” Counter said, “six months before he left for Montreal I had assigned him another file involving football and cricket match-fixing. My unit has the lead on this one as well. Huge problem in Asia with the betting syndicates corrupting the game. Some £280 million wagered last year on the Indian Premier Cricket League alone. Something of an issue in England, too, as you might expect. Carpenter was maintaining a watching brief on the file.”

  Counter shook his head, this time in open consternation.

  “What?” Peter said.

  “Don’t tell anyone, but sooner or later the cricket thing is going to blow up, too, and my section will wear it if we don’t lay charges. Charges by the ton.”

  “Shouldn’t the sport betting problem reside with, say, the Serious Fraud Office?”

  “The issue has become prosecution. The best hope we have is to follow the betting money, and that should be the SFO’s bailiwick. But the money is hard to trace, and until we trace it, we rely on bribery offences, suborning officials, criminal charges of that nature. You see how ‘Special Projects’ can be a catch-all, a curse?”

  Peter suspected that the Yard would continue to walk the devil’s tightrope on both the betting scandal and the phone-hacking outrage. On the former, he knew that the Yard had largely handed off discipline of the gambling syndicates to the regulatory bodies for international cricket. Prosecutions under the U.K. Gambling Act were notoriously problematic. Frank’s best strategy might be to delay.

  Peter reminded himself why he was here. His brief was very simple: drive up to Lincolnshire and talk to the Carpenter family. He returned to Carpenter’s strange assignment.

  “So, Carpenter could be spared?” he repeated.

  “I asked the staff and he volunteered, and I agreed to vacation time.”