The Cilla Rose Affair

by Winona Kent

  “He’s a devious miscreant, once you get to know him,” Anthony said, appropriating one of the chrome-and-vinyl chairs reserved for clients. “He wants to ask a favour of you.”

  “So much for my going home on time for a change. What is it?”

  “I’d like to have a look through Harry’s files.”

  “What, all of them?”

  “Not all of them, no. Just the ones from the last six months or so. So I can get a good idea who his customers are. Where they’ve been going.”

  Sara locked the front door from the inside. “Why?” she asked, suspiciously.

  “It’s my idea, actually,” Anthony apologized. “I mentioned I thought there might be a spot of money laundering going on. Cash coming in from less than legitimate business doings and going out again in a respectable disguise.”

  “What’s Flash Harry been up to?” Sara asked, suspiciously.

  “I’m not sure he’s actually been up to anything,” Ian said. “It’s his friends and acquaintances I’m concerned about.”

  “I don’t think I ought to let you,” Sara said, doubtfully, shutting the safe. “I mean, he’s bound to notice if someone’s been going through his bookings—”

  “I’ll be very careful,” Ian promised.

  Upstairs, Sara unlocked Harry’s upright filing cabinet. “There you are. Active bookings, top drawer, dead ones underneath. He keeps everything for a year after his people have travelled, and then it all gets bundled up and stowed in boxes downstairs. And don’t ask me what happens to them after that—I haven’t been working here long enough to know.”

  She sat on top of Harry’s desk while Ian fingered through the folders, and Anthony examined a large piece of machinery that had been left bricked into the wall when the tube station had reverted to offices.

  “I guess what I’m after,” Ian said, “is proof of some kind of elaborate front for moving cash from Point A to Point B. It wouldn’t even have to be all that complex—as long as it looks legitimate to anyone who might go digging, without really understanding the intricacies of the travel business.”

  “The thing is,” Sara said, “Harry specializes in group bookings. Maureen and I handle all of the traffic from the street, the individual phone calls, that sort of thing. Harry concentrates on incentive travel.”

  “Which is…?”

  “Trips given out as rewards for top-selling sales people…special interest tours. He does a lot of conventions, too.”

  “So this entire cabinet’s full of travel arrangements for large groups of people.”

  “That’s it,” Sara said, sliding off the desk. “Anywhere from ten to a hundred at a time. The average is probably only 20 or 30—but he does a lot of repeat business—you know, a large firm sends its top sales force off on a cruise round the Greek Islands in the summer, and then, for Christmas, it’s a ski holiday in Switzerland. Or this one—”

  She pulled out a thick file folder.

  “Model railway enthusiasts. They’re always trotting off to attend conventions. There’s one coming up, in fact. Las Vegas, next month.”

  She gave Ian the folder and he placed its contents on the floor, carefully, spreading them out following the same order in which they had been placed in the file. A booking sheet, a couple of brochures—one on Las Vegas, one showing their hotel, another detailing the agenda of the model railway convention itself. Receipts, letters, lists of names and copies of cheques written against Young and Dailey’s account.

  “No tickets,” he said, surprised.

  “No, it’s too early. And Harry doesn’t usually issue them, anyway. The entire thing’s handled by a wholesaler—Gallimore Tours. That’s their brochure. They specialize in group bookings and conventions.”

  “Isn’t that what you do?” Anthony asked.

  Sara shook her head. “No, you see, it’s the wholesaler who puts the packages together—air, hotel, ground transportation, little extras—like a Hawaiian luau and a tour of a muumuu factory when you’re in Honolulu. They print up the brochures and then they market the packages through the travel agencies. We’re the retail end of it all. The wholesalers don’t generally deal directly with the public. They leave that part to us.”

  Ian sat on the floor, pondering the various bits and pieces of information spread out in front of him.

  “So if I wanted to arrange a trip through these people,” he said, “how would you handle it? Take me through the transaction.”

  “You’d come in,” Sara said, “probably with a list of names and a fistful of cash, tell Harry what you wanted, and he’d ring up Gallimore and make the booking. You’d put down a deposit—or the full amount, depending on when everything was due—and then Harry would send Gallimore a Young and Dailey cheque to secure the booking. If it was a final payment, he’d make it out for the net amount—the cost of the trip minus our commission. And then, about two weeks before your travel date, the tickets would arrive.”

  “This is the deposit cheque,” Ian said, pointing to the carbon copy clipped neatly to the booking sheet.

  “For that particular trip, yes. Harry keeps the file open—he’s got all the previous payments at the back—here.” She pointed to the little stack of copies, stapled together, that Ian had put on the floor to his right. “The balance is always due a month before they travel.”

  “And that entire filing cabinet’s full of files just like this?”

  Sara nodded.

  “All booked through Gallimore Tours?”

  “Usually, yes.”

  “Harry must be their best customer,” Ian marvelled. “Have you ever actually met any members of this merry band of model railway enthusiasts?”

  “Only one. The same fellow comes in to make the arrangements every time. He pays cash and we issue him a single receipt.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Sometimes they’re done over the phone. Sometimes people come in person. It’s different for every group.”

  She knelt on the floor.

  “The only thing is, Ian, I don’t see how this could be anything but above board. Gallimore Tours is a very large, well-respected firm. They’ve been around for years. And how could any money be laundered when it’s going to pay for legitimate travel expenses?”

  “If these people actually do any travelling,” Ian replied, collecting the receipts and cheques and lists of names.

  “Nothing’s ever cancelled,” Sara said, doubtfully.

  “Not at your end, no. But for all you know, once the names and the money have been forwarded to Gallimore, the process ends. No seats are ever reserved with an airline, no hotel reservations made, no tickets issued.”

  “Ah,” she said, “no. Tickets are issued. I’ve seen them.”

  “Real tickets? As in, the kind that’ll get you aboard a plane?”

  “Actually,” Sara said, thinking, “no. You’re right. A little cardboard wallet comes for each person, and it’s full of things like itineraries and luggage tags…and they’re issued vouchers instead of actual tickets. The tickets are with a Gallimore rep. who meets them at the airport.”

  “There you are,” Ian said. “Have you ever double-checked the passengers’ names against a real airline manifest?”

  “No, Harry likes to do that when he rings up to confirm flight times.”

  “So you never really know, do you, whether they’re real travellers or not.”

  “I suppose not. No.” She shook her head. “I never would have suspected Harry of anything like this, Ian. I mean, he may be doing a bit of a fiddle when it comes to free passes on airlines and the odd tour to the Canary Islands…but whole stacks of passengers who aren’t even legitimate—it’s just not like him.”

  Ian got to his feet, taking the file and its contents with him.

  “Harry doesn’t actually own the agency, does he?”

  “No, he only manages it. His name’s over the door—but that’s apparently an arrangement he came to when he took over. There never has been
a Young, as far as I can make out.”

  “Then perhaps, as a condition of his continuing employment, he’s required to perform certain functions for certain people.”

  “The owners, you mean.”

  Ian nodded. “That’s one possible explanation, anyway. Anthony—job for you. Sara—where’s the nearest photocopier?”

  It was early in the evening, and the daytime scramble and commerce of the City had dwindled into the long shadows and empty thoroughfares of bankers’ hours.

  “This way, sir,” Rupert said, hurrying the Deputy DG of X Branch around the corner. He stopped in front of one of the grey stone monoliths of trade. “I think this must be it.”

  The door was black and nondescript, and recessed into the masonry wall. It had been propped open with a large brick, revealing a glazed brick entranceway and an old and footworn circular staircase, descending beneath the street.

  Victor poked his nose into the gloomy passage. “Smells like a bloody mausoleum,” he said, with a distasteful sniff.

  “I’ve got a light,” Rupert answered, helpfully.

  “How far down is it?”

  “Seventy-five feet, Mr. Lewis said.” He noted Victor’s hesitation. “Will you be all right, sir?”

  “Yes, I’ll be all right,” Victor answered, irritably. He seized Rupert’s torch, and switched it on, and went in.

  Rupert followed him down.

  They were met at the bottom by Bob Lewis, shining his own bright beacon up to greet them.

  “At last,” he said.

  “Yes, sorry, Mr. Lewis. Unavoidable delays.”

  “What is this place?” Victor asked.

  “King William Street Station. Or what’s left of it. The original site dates from 1890. It was modified once—in 1895—and finally abandoned in 1900. Made redundant when the present City branch of the Northern was tunnelled through from Borough to London Bridge to Bank.”

  Victor aimed the light over Bob’s shoulder. “Something was mentioned about water.”

  “Yes, and there’s rather a lot of it, I’m afraid. You’ll want these.” He produced two pairs of rubber boots, and waited for Rupert and Victor to change into them, then led the two men through a sloping passageway to a black, oily lake that lapped at the brick walls of the abandoned station and sulked off through its dark, echoing archways.

  “It’s only two inches at this point, but down there, where the main station tunnel is, it’s quite a bit deeper. The rail pits are full and the water’s flooded over what’s left of the platform.”

  Victor swung the light around, glancing it off the walls. He took little comfort in the tattered remnants of the wartime posters, testament to the old station’s conscription as a shelter in the summer of 1940. It was dank and cold and suffocating, and he had lost sight of the way out.

  “Where do these tracks go?” he asked.

  “Under Monument Street and Swan Lane, then under the river to the west of London Bridge.”

  “Are they linked to the existing Northern Line?”

  “Thankfully,” Bob replied, “no. The present City Branch leaves the original excavations north of Borough. Both ends of this section were plugged with concrete at the start of the last war to guard against flooding from bomb damage.”

  Rupert made a swirling pattern in the water with the toe of his rubber boot. “So there’s been some sort of a leak, is what you’re saying.”

  “A rather large one, in fact. The roof of one of the tunnels in the riverbed appears to have been breached, as well as the concrete plug.”

  “And what’s the cause of these failures?” Victor asked, his voice betraying impatience.

  “Difficult to say. Natural erosion, perhaps. A stress fracture, a fault in the tunnel’s lining.”

  “But that wouldn’t account for the concrete plug going as well, would it?” Rupert asked.

  “No, you’re quite right, it wouldn’t.”

  “Your suggestion is that we’re dealing with the possibility of sabotage,” Victor said.

  “There is that potential, yes. We’re always on the alert for terrorists, of course, as there are quite a lot of useful tunnels criss-crossing under the river—footpaths, cable conduits, motorways. Ten belonging to us.” He listed them on his fingers. “Wapping to Rotherhithe on the East London Line…London Bridge to Bank, on the Northern, as I’ve already pointed out…Waterloo to Embankment on both the Northern and the Bakerloo. Vauxhall to Pimlico on the Victoria. A north and a southbound tunnel for each crossing. Plus BR’s Waterloo and City, this stretch of tracking here, and the old single tunnel belonging to the Charing Cross Loop. That’s another five.”

  “The Charing Cross Loop,” Rupert said. “Where’s that?”

  “Strand. Or what was Strand before it was incorporated into the Trafalgar Square-Charing Cross redevelopment. Strand was the original southern terminus of the Northern Line. During one particularly fruitful period of expansion—1914, I believe it was—the line was extended south by way of a single track running out under Villiers Street and Embankment Gardens to the river. It then looped back under the Thames, and a platform was built on the outside of the loop to connect it to the Bakerloo and District Lines. The resulting station is present-day Embankment. The northbound platform is a part of that original loop. You can still see the curve: it’s fairly severe.”

  “I knew we ought to have got some sort of alert out, sir,” Rupert said, worriedly. “Sir…?”

  Victor didn’t answer. He was hot—uncomfortably hot—and his heart was beginning to pound. Which way had they come in? He searched the arches with his light.

  “The part of the loop under the river,” Bob continued, “was abandoned in 1926, when the Northern Line was extended south to Waterloo and Kennington. I mention it now, gentlemen, because the roof of the tunnel is only 10 feet below the riverbed, and it received a direct hit during the bombing of London in 1940, and a section of tracking over 200 yards long was flooded. If the precaution had not been taken a year earlier to seal the tunnel at both of its ends, the entire Underground network from Shepherd’s Bush to Liverpool Street, from Hammersmith to Kings Cross, from Clapham Common to Euston and from Elephant and Castle to Marylebone would, in fact, have been swamped. The possible implications of damage of this scope and size are, of course, catastrophic.”

  “Not to mention the proximity of the Charing Cross Loop to the vital Whitehall installations, sir,” Rupert added.

  “You have floodgates,” Victor answered, irritably.

  “True. They weigh six tons each and can be shut tight in less than a minute. They ring all of the stations along the river. They’re electrically operated, of course.”

  “Electrically operated?” Rupert asked, faintly.

  “That’s right.”

  “So if the mains were somehow shorted out—”

  The beam of Victor’s torch had at last caught a black and white frieze in the tiles—an old-fashioned arrow and the words WAY OUT.

  “Sir—this is terribly important—it explains everything—the outages, the Underground—the damage—the water—”

  But Victor was already splashing off towards the stairs.

  “Sir—please—”

  Rupert was momentarily taken aback by the appearance of a fourth individual from behind one of the archways, effectively blocking the Deputy DG’s access to the exit.

  “Good evening, Victor,” Evan Harris said.

  “Who’re you?” Rupert demanded.

  Victor Barnfather glared at the Canadian agent. “It’s Harris, isn’t it,” he said, curtly. “What do you want?”

  “I have news concerning one of your friends, Victor.” Evan held the torch low, so that it exaggerated the shadows around his face, lending him an altogether ghoulish appearance. “A little singing bird named Nora Darrow.”

  “I don’t know any Nora Darrow,” Victor said, tersely.

  “As you wish,” Evan acquiesced. “I’m sure you’re aware, however, that she was taken in by Sp
ecial Branch earlier today for questioning.”

  Victor attempted to step around the Canadian; Evan moved quickly to impede his progress.

  “Mrs. Darrow’s been extraordinarily helpful to us, Victor. She’s even given me a little book—one I’m certain she’s told you about. The journal of Trevor Jackson?”

  “I know nothing of that. Who is Trevor Jackson?”

  Evan smiled. He shone his light on a slender, hard-bound diary he held aloft in his left hand. “There’s an entire page devoted to you in here, Victor. Not enough to convict you of violating The Act, of course—it’s only the handwritten testimony of a dead man, and none of it can be proven. But, added to the information Mrs. Darrow’s promised to provide in exchange for a lighter prison sentence on her part…well. What a treasure trove, Victor.”

  “What reason,” the Deputy DG replied, choosing his words with care, “could this Mrs. Darrow possibly have for turning over that so-called diary to you?”

  “Mrs. Darrow recently committed a very grave error in judgement, Victor. She took it upon herself to kidnap my son. And after she’d got what she wanted from me, she decided to kill him. But before she could accomplish that, she had him hidden away in an abandoned tube station. Romilly Square. I’m quite certain you’re familiar with the place I’m talking about. My son’s an enterprising young man, Victor, and he doesn’t take the possibility of his imminent demise lightly. So he looked for a way out of his predicament. And he found it—but not before he happened across something else: a dozen wooden boxes filled with guns and ammunition—no doubt destined at one point for one or more of the embargoed countries scattered around the globe. Rather a serious business, Victor, wouldn’t you say?”

  For a moment Victor appeared to digest the news, reacting with only a stony silence. Then, brusquely pushing Evan aside, he made for the staircase, and the safety of the surface.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he muttered, under his breath, as he elbowed past the Canadian in the dripping darkness.

  “Mission accomplished?” Ian inquired, glancing up as his father appeared in the doorway of the night-lit office at Canada House.