The Home Secretary Will See You Now (Gaffney and Tipper Mysteries Book 3)

by Graham Ison

  Chapter Nine

  Jimmy Glover was rotund, short, and bald with just a monk’s fringe round the back of his head from one ear to the other. His sports jacket had seen better days and there was not the vestige of a crease in his trousers. He lit a fresh cigarette with the stub of the old one and listened as Gaffney told him the purpose of their visit.

  ‘Aye, I heard.’ He moved papers about and reorganised the furniture so that the detectives could sit down. ‘You’ll never find a political agent with an office that’s either big enough or decently decorated,’ he said, looking round, ‘even in this constituency where the Member is Home Secretary. What can I do for you?’ He had a North-country accent and a brusque manner.

  ‘Tell me about Dudley Lavcry … and his wife.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘You knew the first wife?’

  ‘Aye. I knew him when he were bugger-all, lad. I know all about our Dudley.’ He leaned forward and Gaffney thought that he was about to impart a confidence, but he merely wanted to empty the ashtray into the waste-paper basket. ‘I’ve been agent here for thirty year or more. Had twelve year of the last bugger afore he were packed off upstairs to make room for our rising star. Still, you’d know all about that sort of chicanery being from Special Branch … ’ He paused. ‘You are, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Thought as much. Course, we see a lot of Tony Lisle and John Selway, and t’other chap … what’s his name?’

  ‘Lenny Silvester — he’s the inspector.’

  ‘Aye, that’s the fellow. Don’t seem to see so much of him.’

  ‘Probably the way the roster falls,’ said Gaffney.

  ‘Aye, happen. Well now, let me see. It were 1970 election. They packed last fellow off to the Lords like I said. Mind, he were getting a bit past it. Still, he weren’t fussed. What do they get for signing the book — twenty-five quid a day?’

  Gaffney nodded. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘And the best free car-park in London, too. Any road, along comes young Dudley … ’ Glover shook his head and cackled. ‘He never knew whether he were punched, bored or countersunk then. Full of hisself now he is. He must have been … ’ He looked at the ceiling reflectively. ‘’Bout thirty-five, I wouldn’t wonder. He’d been a barrister for about twelve years but he knew bugger-all about politics, and that’s a fact. Wet behind the ears weren’t in it. Used to hang on to me then like I was a bloody lifebelt: “What do I do now?” or “What do I say?” and “Where do I go?”. Bloody helpless, he were.’

  ‘Did he have a fight on his hands?’

  Glover smiled tolerantly. ‘Nay, lad. This constituency’s been ours since they invented democracy.’ He cackled again. ‘Or what passes for it. Be a bit different next time, mind, wi’ boundary changes.’ He sniffed. ‘Any road, it were party decided they wanted to make room for our Dudley. Happens all the time in politics. Along comes this bright young chap — ’

  ‘Thirty-five, you said?’

  ‘Aye, well, that’s young in politics.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘There’s not too many younger than that. Oh, I know you get these whizz-kids coming in straight from university at the age of twenty-one, but there’s not that many. Mid-thirties is a good age to start in politics. Not that age makes a great deal of difference. We’ve got back-benchers of over sixty, been in the House twenty years, and still as daft as the day they arrived.’

  ‘What was he like — in 1970?’

  ‘More like 1969. He were nursing constituency for a year or more.’

  ‘All right, then; 1969.’

  ‘Very keen to learn. Bundle of energy. Nose into everything. Rushing about.’ Glover rattled off a staccato description of the Member. ‘Wi’ about as much finesse as a man pushing a door marked “Pull”.’ He sighed resignedly. ‘Still, that’s what political agents are for: teaching them the trade. Bit like a nursemaid or a cross between a guardian angel and an awful spectre. It don’t do to forget that your agent knew you when you were bugger-all. Some do, but most don’t. It’s as well that agents don’t make a habit of writing their memoirs. I can’t think why they don’t, mind you; the bloody pittance they pay us.’ He sniffed, loudly. ‘D’you want a cup of tea?’ he asked suddenly, as if daring them to accept.

  ‘If it’s no trouble,’ said Gaffney.

  ‘Everything’s trouble in this place,’ grumbled Glover. He walked across to a metal filing-cabinet, took out a teapot and three chipped china mugs, and carried them to the window-sill where an electric kettle stood on a tea-stained tin tray. Then he left the room to fill up the kettle.

  ‘Happy soul, isn’t he?’ Tipper grinned.

  ‘We’re likely to get more from him than all the others put together,’ said Gaffney.

  Glover returned, kicking the office door shut with his foot. ‘Still, it’s his wife you’re interested in, isn’t it?’

  Gaffney smiled. ‘Yes, his late wife.’

  ‘I don’t know why he got shot of first,’ said Glover. ‘Bonny lass, she were. Dorothy she were called. Take sugar and milk?’ He busied himself with what he called mashing the tea and then sat down behind his desk again. ‘Fitted in very well up here, did Dorothy. More’an can be said for next one.’ He opened a drawer in his desk and produced a tin of biscuits. ‘Help yourselves.’ He pushed it towards them. ‘This is a strange sort of constituency. You’ve got a bit of everything. Can’t just confine yourself to the bit you like, the bit you feel at home in. There’s factories as well, and council estates, and farms, and if you want their votes — and you want to keep them — you’ve not to be afraid of getting your hands dirty. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Now our Dorothy

  was good at that. I’ve seen her in her wellingtons and an old anorak out all over the constituency, in all weathers too. All things to all people, she were. And I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, neither.’ He frowned at them. ‘But as for the last one … ’ He shook his head sadly, more because of her failure as a Member’s wife, than her premature and violent death.

  ‘Did that cause a rift, then?’ asked Gaffney.

  ‘Happen. Don’t rightly know, lad. I know what caused a rift between him and Dorothy, though.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Aye, from what I heard, it were a fancy bit of secretary at the House of Commons called Shirley … ’ He screwed his face up and washed his hands silently. ‘Don’t know nowt else about it. Probably a load of gossip.’

  ‘When was this?’ asked Gaffney.

  Glover’s chin sunk on to his chest as he gave that some thought. ‘More than ten years back,’ he said finally. ‘That were last straw for Dorothy, I reckon. She’d done her best, but she were nowt more’an a skivvy really. If he weren’t in House he were in court somewhere. I think he only wanted a wife for decoration. Good thing to have, a wife. If you don’t have one, they reckon you’re queer, and that’s a few more votes gone. More than you’d pick up because of it.’ His face retained its lugubrious look; everything that Jimmy Glover had done for the past thirty years had been assessed in terms of votes: votes won or votes lost. For him there was no other yardstick. ‘It wasn’t as if I didn’t warn him.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Splitting up in election year. That were daft.’

  ‘Who left who?’

  ‘Oh, she did, but it were his fault. I told him to go after her, patch it up, at least till after election.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘Nay, lad. Too busy.’ He laughed scornfully. ‘But at least they kept it quiet until after it was over — the election, I mean. Decent to the last, Dorothy. God knows why; right neglected, she were.’

  ‘And then Elizabeth appeared on the scene?’

  ‘Bless you no, not immediately. That were years on. Funnily enough that were an election year an’all. I reckon that’s what got him going. They were starting to ask questions, see; particularly committee.’ He ran his hand round his chin. ‘Must have been two year after they split up
that divorce came through.’ He nodded in confirmation. ‘Aye, that were it, and she wed a doctor from America; lives there now. And good luck to her; no more’an she deserves, poor lass.’

  ‘Are you saying that the constituency party persuaded him to get married again, Mr Glover?’

  Glover grinned a lopsided grin. ‘Almost, aye. Told him he’d no hope of getting to Number Ten without a wife. I told him an’all.’ For a second or two he stared at an out-of-date calendar on the opposite wall. ‘Any road,’ he continued, ‘he got wed, like I said, to this Elizabeth.’ It was obvious that he had not been much impressed with Lavery’s second wife. ‘Actress, she were; supposed to be, any road. Never saw her in owt on the telly, and that’s fact. London stage perhaps.’ He dismissed Elizabeth Lavery’s acting career with a contemptuous sniff. ‘Now, you’d never see her in boots and anorak; oh no, that’d not be to her ladyship’s liking at all. I reckon she never minded the London part of it all. The cocktail parties and that sort of toffee-nosed carry-on. I heard her once, saying to Dudley: “They’re not our kind of people”. Huh! I don’t know who she were talking about, but I can bloody guess.’ He paused to push his hand inside his shirt and scratch his chest. ‘Mind you, there’s not a great deal of pomp and circumstance at a bring-and-buy in the church hall up at Crabtree. A right madam she were. All very fine at the Lord-Lieutenant’s reception, dressed up in her best, but nowt so good looking-in on the bingo in aid of the party funds.’

  ‘What did Mr Lavery think? Did he say anything to her?’ Glover pondered on that. ‘I don’t rightly know, lad,’ he said slowly, and sniffed loudly. ‘Never heard’em bandying words, like, but there were occasions when the silence were a bit frigid.’

  ‘Did she always come to the constituency with him?’

  Glover thought about that for a bit, too. ‘Aye, at first she did, but then not so often. It’s a bit difficult trying to remember for sure. See, after the party got into office and he became the Home Secretary, he never come up hisself so often. I suppose then he must have had a surgery about once every three weeks. If we saw her up here four times a year, I reckon we’d count ourselves lucky.’ He sucked through his teeth. ‘Mind you, that depends on your point of view.’

  ‘What was she doing while he was up here? Any ideas?’

  Glover’s eyes narrowed. ‘Nay, lad, I don’t righdy know. Perhaps you ought to ask t’Member.’

  The clinical atmosphere of the entrance hall of the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square always reminded Gaffney of an operating theatre. He exchanged a few words of banter with the security guard who nevertheless insisted on his going through the metal-detector archway to prove that he was unarmed and did not, therefore, pose a threat to the stability of the United States Government.

  Eventually he was shown into Joe Daly’s office. Daly was the Legal Attache, a euphemism for the senior FBI agent-in-residence.

  ‘John!’ Daly advanced across the office and shook hands vigorously. ‘How ya doin’?’ He was a huge bear of a man with a thick thatch of iron-grey hair, and a twinkle in grey eyes that peered out at the world from behind rimless spectacles, inviting it to see the funny side of life.

  ‘I need some help, Joe/

  ‘Right, right.’ Daly moved some newspapers off a small table to make room for the coffee that seemed to arrive automatically whenever a visitor appeared in his office. ‘So what’s new?’

  Gaffney stirred his coffee. ‘You’ve heard about the murder of the Home Secretary’s wife … ?’

  Daly nodded. ‘Some job you’ve got on your hands there, John.’ He was genuinely sympathetic; detectives the world

  over appreciated the difficulty of crime with a political involvement.

  ‘I need to trace an American citizen called Cody, Paul Cody.’

  Daly pulled a pad of paper from his desk and rested it on his knee. ‘Shoot!’

  ‘There’s not much.’

  ‘Was there ever?’ murmured Daly.

  ‘He’s an actor — or was — and left here to go back to the States about five years ago. He was going to New York; the bright lights of Broadway. He’s now about thirty-seven years of age.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Jeez, John, you want a miracle?’

  Gaffney smiled. ‘I have been told that the FBI is the finest investigative agency in the world.’

  Daly snorted. ‘Who told you that crap?’

  ‘An FBI agent,’ said Gaffney.

  ‘Is that really all you’ve got?’

  ‘There’s one other thing which might help. I’ve been told that he was bom in Scotland while his father was serving there as a sergeant in the US Air Force.’ He paused. ‘But I can’t guarantee the reliability of that information.’ Daly sighed. ‘I’ll do my best, John. What d’you want to know about this guy … if we find him?’

  ‘Anything he can tell us about Elizabeth Lavery — or Fairfax as she was known then — and where he was on the night she was killed.’

  Daly looked up from his notes. ‘You think he might have been responsible?’

  ‘I don’t know, Joe, but funnier things have happened.’ ‘Jesus Christ, I hope not,’ said Daly. ‘The President would go bananas if it was an American citizen who murdered your Home Secretary’s wife.’ He shook his head at the enormity of it all.

  Gaffney laughed. ‘You shouldn’t have left the Empire,’ he said.

  The Home Secretary placed the tips of his fingers together and gazed out at the two detectives from beneath lowered eyebrows. ‘Well, Mr Gaffney, you have some progress to report?’

  ‘To be perfectly honest, sir, no. That is to say that our progress has been of a negative sort.’

  Lavery smiled bleakly. ‘Have you ever thought of becoming a politician?’ he asked.

  Gaffney smiled too, for the sake of politeness. ‘What I mean, sir, is that we have effectively closed certain lines of enquiry.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as the possibility that the murderer was a burglar whom your wife disturbed.’

  ‘You are certain of that?’

  Gaffney nodded slowly. ‘As certain as one can be in any criminal investigation, yes. There was no sign of forcible entry. No sign of anything having been stolen … ’ He glanced enquiringly at Lavery who nodded. ‘In fact, no sign of anything untoward at all.’

  ‘What are you suggesting, Mr Gaffney?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything, but the line I am pursuing is that your late wife may have admitted the killer quite innocently and then — ’

  ‘Out of the question,’ said Lavery heatedly. ‘Your people — Tony Lisle — gave her specific — ’

  ‘I’m not suggesting a total stranger, sir; I’m suggesting someone that your wife perhaps knew, maybe only casually, or had met somewhere … ’

  ‘Mmm … ’ Lavery stared down at his desk reflectively. ‘Well that, of course, would encompass literally thousands; with me in politics and her in the acting profession.’

  ‘Was she still in the acting profession?’

  ‘In a way, but no longer on stage.’ He smiled. ‘No, she was an adviser. Costume, mainly, I think. It seemed to take up a lot of her time, I know. There were occasions when we didn’t see each other for a week or more at a time.’

  ‘What form did this job of hers take, sir?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know a great deal about the acting business, but her task apparently, was to be present when they were planning a play or a film, to make sure that the costumes were correct. It seems that mistakes can be made, particularly in period pieces, that could ruin the whole thing, so they tell me … He looked vacantly around the large office. ‘So you see she could have run across all sorts of people in the film business.’ He smiled benignly. ‘And there are some scallywags in it, as I’m sure you know, Mr Gaffney.’

  ‘Did your wife ever go to Spain, sir?’

  ‘Spain … ?’ The Home Secretary looked thoughtful.

  ‘Yes, I believ
e she did. Something to do with India, I think it was.’

  ‘India? In Spain?’

  Lavery smiled tolerantly. ‘It was a film that offended the susceptibilities of the Indian Government, something to do with the last days of the Raj — you know the sort of thing — and the Indians wouldn’t grant permission for it to be filmed there. So it had to be made in Spain.’

  ‘What was it called, the film?’

  Lavery shook his head slowly. ‘D’you know, 1 haven’t the faintest idea.’ He looked up with the incisive stare that he usually reserved for television interviewers who had asked a hypothetical question. ‘Why? Does it matter?’ He spoke impatiently as if to imply that he was very busy and hadn’t the time to answer what he probably saw as banal questions, even if they did come from the police officer who was investigating his wife’s murder.

  ‘Not really, sir. It might just have saved me a little time,’ said Gaffney and shrugged. One of the things he had discovered over years of close association with politicians was that those whose public image was disagreeable were usually very pleasant people in private, whereas the unctuously smooth individual with the beguiling interview smile was, so often, in private thoroughly objectionable. It made a pleasant change to meet a politician who appeared to be agreeable both in public and private. Gaffney could forgive him his impatience;

  it must be gruelling to be reminded constantly of his wife’s violent death. ‘When would that have been, when your wife went to Spain?’

  Lavery sighed gently. ‘I hope you don’t think I’m being unco-operative, Mr Gaffney’ — he smiled the dental smile again that some public relations expert had told him carried conviction — ‘but I really don’t know.’ He leaned back in his leather-upholstered chair and laid his hands flat on the arms in an attitude almost of despair. ‘This is a terribly onerous job, and I’m afraid that I left my wife very much to her own devices, more perhaps than I should have done. If only I’d known.’ His voice dropped to a whisper, and for a moment he stared blankly at the opposite wall before looking at Gaffney again. ‘It might be a good idea if you spoke to Mary Diver; she’s my secretary — for the constituency — and she works from the House. She used to do an awful lot for Elizabeth; I think you’ll find she may be able to help.’ He flipped over a page of his desk diary and glanced at the clock.