The Devil's Home on Leave (Factory 2)

by Raymond, Derek

  I had Hadrill’s file in my drawer already – mind, I knew enough about him without it. Now there was a funny man. He’d hardly ever done bird – much too sharp – just three months for whizzing a motor when he was a lad. But he was one of those folk with ears so big for hearing what didn’t concern him, you wouldn’t believe. His mouth in the photograph was correspondingly small, except when you offered it money; then it expanded in an alarming way and a lot of stuff came out of it – big stuff. It was always more than enough to send somebody down for a long while. I hate grasses. I use them because I have to, but I hate them. I had met Hadrill, though he mightn’t have remembered because it wasn’t my case. He’d done well for himself, he thought; he was smug, frightened, gay and a tiny spender. Now, if he were still alive, he mightn’t be sure that he’d done that well. Still, it had been the good life while it lasted – good clothes, food and a bachelor’s pad in W11, though he’d kicked off, like plenty of other people, in SE12. I’d seen Jack around on his manor up at the Gate; everybody had. He drank over at the Wild Card Club up by the underground, wore a clipper-style cap which was supposed to make you think he was something out of The Onedin Line (he sometimes said he was, after his fourth pint) and tight knee-length boots. He probably went to bed in all that and thought he was a fucking Sturmbannführer every time he had a wet dream.

  But he was just a grass, and I considered that other interesting thing about him, that he was gay. A gay grass.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘now we know it was Jack Hadrill. We know it two ways – what I got out of this man Smitty and the note.’

  ‘Yes, when you leave a note like that it makes it almost official. The DPP’ll like that,’ said the voice.

  ‘Do you remember the last thing Jack did? It made him a lot of taxpayers’ money, but it got him in right shtuck as well.’

  ‘That was over Pat Hawes, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, we didn’t handle it. Too high-powered for us.’

  ‘We didn’t handle it, sir.’

  ‘No, that’s right, we didn’t. Hadrill went to Bowman over it.’

  ‘Chief Inspector Bowman.’

  ‘Yes, Bowman, that’s the man, over at Serious Crimes. Jack grassed Hawes over that big wages snatch up north, out York way, and Hawes drew a lot of bird because a security guard was killed and so, what with his form, they threw the book at him, and a good thing too.’

  ‘You think eight years in Parkhurst or Wakefield will improve his morale, sergeant?’

  ‘He never had any. If I’d been Serious Crimes I’d have liked to know more about that business with the guard. He was going off shift; he wasn’t even armed, it says in the transcript. Either Hawes was just trigger-happy, or there was more to it, I’d say; I like the second possibility better. Still, having people like Hawes out of circulation does clear the ground for other business. Mopping up the same old thieves and murderers time after time does get monotonous, you feel you’re getting nowhere.’

  ‘We’re quite the philosopher today, sergeant, aren’t we? So you still want to get after McGruder, do you?’

  ‘I’ve started. I want to get after him even harder now, sir.’

  ‘Good God,’ said the voice, ‘you finally said it. I know I’m only a deputy commander, but I thought you were never going to.’

  I imagined he was trying to be funny.

  ‘Hawes never forgets,’ I said, ‘people like that never do from their viewpoint, why should they? There’s every reason to think he had Hadrill done; he’s got plenty of money available even if he is inside. And Hadrill told Serious Crimes a lot about that raid, you’ll remember, but neither they nor the DPP’s office thought fit to go after it at the time.’

  ‘No, that was killed from on high,’ said the voice.

  ‘How high?’

  ‘High enough. What the mind doesn’t know, the heart doesn’t grieve over, sergeant; you must know that old saying.’

  ‘I know lots of old sayings,’ I said. ‘One of them is that what’s allowed to go cold can be warmed over. I can’t remember the exact words.’

  ‘The exact words, sir.’

  ‘That’s it. I can’t remember them.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about your memory. This Hadrill business – I want to be kept informed the whole time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s the way I want it, and that’s all you need bother about.’

  ‘Do you know something about it that I don’t?’

  ‘I’m not saying that. All I’m saying is, you never know what a case like this can turn into.’

  ‘What I do know,’ I said, ‘is that if this one gets out of hand it could turn into a bloody nightmare.’

  ‘What I want you to understand, sergeant,’ said the voice, ‘is that if you disobey my orders it’ll turn into a nightmare for you.’

  ‘You don’t often give any orders.’

  ‘No, I know. So that when I do, I want them obeyed.’

  He rang off on that.

  I put down the phone and looked out of the window at the grey clouds, full of rain, bursting on the roof of Marks & Sparks opposite. I had a sudden dreadful feeling, like the man who realizes too late that he shouldn’t have overtaken on a double bend and sees the accident racing towards him. A mate of mine, a motorcycle patrolman, was crippled for life that way, chasing a souped-up Cortina full of villains through the lanes round Maidstone one Saturday night. It took him six months to get his memory back; then he described it to me when I went to see him in hospital – how the road was slippery after rain and how his bike hit the front of the oncoming van sideways while he was on the wrong side of the road overtaking two other vehicles and trying to brake from ninety: the disbelief, the impact, the nothing. ‘They’ve rechristened me Mr Multiple Fracture,’ he told me, grinning through his smashed teeth. He was retired, of course, and they weren’t generous with him because he had been in the wrong and the van driver had been badly injured.

  It didn’t matter that much; he died in hospital three months later.

  Now I wondered if something sudden like that was going to happen to me – even down to being in the wrong as well.

  19

  ‘Can we have a truce?’ I said to Bowman. ‘Now don’t lose your wig – I mean just ten minutes’ worth.’

  ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘you must be fucking desperate.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I said, ‘I’m anxious for some information. I want to know everything you can tell me about Pat Hawes and that factory up north, that shoe factory that was robbed. You made that arrest, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Bowman. ‘I don’t feel like helping you,’ he grumbled, ‘I never feel like helping you.’

  ‘This is a truce.’

  ‘Yes, all right. Well, thanks to Jackie Hadrill it was easy, a doddle. Hawes went down hard because he shot that security man. He shot him because the feller caught them at it, and they didn’t expect him, see?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘because I suppose they’d had their card marked that it was OK just to go in.’

  ‘Right,’ said Bowman, ‘Hadrill had marked it for them, so they didn’t even bother to go in with a balaclava on, so of course the guard could have identified them.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Next – do you know what connection Jackie had with that factory?’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t tell us, though I asked him, and I didn’t press him. He’d grassed Hawes, which was the deal we’d made, and that was what mattered to us. But he must have been well in there somehow.’

  ‘You knew he was gay?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Did it ever occur to you that he might have had sexual relations with someone up there and then threaten to blow the whistle on him if he didn’t get certain information?’

  ‘No, it didn’t,’ said Bowman. ‘Look, I’m not the Branch. My job was to make arrests over that factory rip-off and the death of the guard. And I did, and the DPP was happy with it.’

  ‘Pity you didn�
��t push the boat out a little further, just the same,’ I said.

  ‘Look,’ said Bowman patiently, ‘you can’t twist the arm of a man like that too hard. If you do, you’re liable to lose him. A big grass like that, if you try to get out of him something he doesn’t want to tell you, he’ll just go and find some other officer, more accommodating.’

  I sighed. ‘Yes, well, it’s too late now. But I think he was keeping a great deal back.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘First,’ I said, ‘because if it was something really big, let’s say it was security-linked, he’d have ended up having to go to the Branch. And if he’d done that, he’d have had to grass this theoretical boyfriend of his that he was putting the black on. And he might have had reasons for not wanting to do that. Also, take the guard. Come on, let’s speculate – maybe the guard knew about Hadrill and Mr X. He may have been gay himself. He might have got ideas about putting the black on Mr X all on his own, of grassing Hadrill before Hadrill was ready. A horner-in, if you’ll excuse the pun. That guard could have been a thundering nuisance to Hadrill.’

  ‘You do pick up odd lines on the obvious,’ said Bowman, ‘and put another twist on them, I’ll say that. Mind, gay – it’s no crime to be gay nowadays,’ he added regretfully.

  ‘No crime – still, it could be awkward for a married man, say, doing top-grade security work in a government establishment. It’s all theory, of course.’

  ‘You’re a funny man, you are,’ said Bowman, ‘there are times when you really freak me. You’re difficult, cheeky, self-opinionated –you don’t try and get on in the force at all. Yet some of your theories, seeing this is a truce, well, I like them, I can’t deny it.’

  ‘You sound to me as if you knew something I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Are you telling me every single thing you know or suspect about this robbery? Come on. Are you?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, I’m not. There are certain things I’m not telling you because I haven’t the authority to do it.’

  I was truly astonished. ‘Never, never in my life,’ I said, ‘have I ever heard you say a thing like that before.’ I added: ‘What’s the matter with you? Something new on the ministry of defence?’

  ‘No, Christ, why?’ he shouted. ‘Have you heard something?’

  ‘No I haven’t, only you look as if you had.’

  ‘Look,’ he said, grabbing me by the jacket, ‘are you on to someone over this Hadrill killing? Anyone? Come on, speak up, fuck you!’

  ‘Yes, I may be,’ I said. I shook him loose: ‘It’s a lucky thing I only wear old clothes to work.’

  He shrieked: ‘Come on, I haven’t got all day – who are you after for it?’

  ‘It’s more what my head tells me than anything definite yet.’

  ‘The name, the name!’ he groaned.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it might ring a bell with you at that. I’m not saying you deserve it, but the name’s Billy McGruder.’

  ‘Him? Christ! I thought he was in Central America or something.’

  ‘For your information,’ I said, ‘Central America is now a bus ride from hell – cost you all of eighty pence, a housing estate over at Catford.’

  ‘You think you can stick it on him?’

  ‘Yes, I think I can,’ I said, ‘because frankly I’m convinced he did it.’

  ‘Some information received?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘We’d none of us get far without some of that after all, would we?’

  ‘Now don’t start taking the piss,’ he said.

  ‘I’m really getting so interested in the rest of that factory,’ I said, ‘that I’m going to try and check it out.’

  ‘Well, you won’t get far.’

  ‘What are they really making up there that’s so bloody secret?’ I said. ‘Come on, Charlie, whatever it is, disguising it as a shoe factory was an incredibly stupid idea if you ask me.’

  ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Look, you could be talking about a government department.’

  ‘What else could I be talking about?’ It’s a typical civil servant idea. They live in egg-boxes, these people – no one in his right mind’d ever swallow the notion it was a shoe factory. Shoe factory!’ I shouted. ‘You don’t get people in white coats with heads like a goose’s egg and a degree in physics making bloody shoes, not even in these hard times!’

  ‘Look,’ said Bowman, ‘don’t be the greyhound, son, give the hare a chance. Don’t be deliberate, see? Just leave that factory alone.’

  ‘But how can I, if Hadrill’s connected?’

  ‘Don’t be so fucking holy!’ he shouted. ‘Do I have to draw you a map? Give them a bit of flannel, pass it back upstairs. Do what I did. Please ’em, please ’em, all you have to do is to please ’em! I’m trying to help you, son – just concentrate on your plastic bags.’

  ‘You’re not running this case, Charlie – I am.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he said, ‘you are a right nut and I’m humouring you for it, but you’re stretching it, calling me Charlie. I hate it: I’m always telling you.’

  ‘You’re cunning,’ I said, ‘and it’s what makes you stupid, Charlie – I like you but you do get on my nerves.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like you, sergeant,’ he said, ‘it’s no good, I just don’t – there’s something about you, like arrogant or something, that gets right up my nose.’

  ‘It’s not arrogance,’ I said, ‘it’s my plain thinking. I’ve got no rank to win, none to lose, I think clear.’

  We stood up at the same moment; the truce was over.

  20

  I had been checking on Pat Hawes through the computer, but it wasn’t easy, because a lot of what I wanted had a Branch star on it, and that meant you had to get far up to the top before you could get access to the file. But I was interested why the Branch had ever been on to Hawes at all, so I went as far up as the voice which, after I had told it why I wanted the material, reluctantly went further up still. This enabled me to find out that for a good while Hawes (with his brother Andy, dead now down to a villains’ shootout in Stockwell) had been mixed up with the Soviet Trade Delegation over at Highgate. Trade Delegation was the polite Russian name for their espionage services in this country. Normally, that was none of my business, but I was interested to see, in this context, that we had been giving it a great deal of attention lately. What one of its branches did (the one I cared about) was subvert our higher-ranking politicians if they could, and that was where Pat and Andy had come in. If there was one thing those two specialized in aside from downright naked villainy it was running moody companies. The companies were nothing but expensive notepaper and a kosher letterhead, with registered offices in a shed in the brothers’ back garden in Greenwich. Then they got hold of idiot punters, greedy MPs attracted by easy money, and put them on the board. All the punters had to do – anyway, that was what it looked like at first – was commit themselves by signing share certificates, then carry on and just draw directors’ fees. But quite soon things would get more complicated for the punter. He would find himself having straight questions put to him by ‘fellow directors’; the subject would invariably be classified information. It was really tricky for the punter. If he kicked across with the answers, fine, well then he had betrayed his country and could carry on drawing his fees again in peace for a while. If he refused, Pat and Andy would reveal that the company that was paying him was completely bent, and would threaten to pull the rug out. This happened often, because these moody companies were financed from Highgate; and if there was one thing the Haweses hated, it was having to pay anyone money for long. Neither were the Russians a charity organization. Then there would be a sudden by-election, the sitting member having resigned through ‘ill-health’.

  The Fraud Squad and the Branch had had a lot of trouble so bad that at one point Chief Inspector Verlander had put up a notice in his room that read: The Following MPs Will Not Be Served. Once, a junior minister had had the rug pulled out too soon – as Andy Hawes remarked
at the minister’s trial, ‘just to see what would happen, like’. What happened was that the junior minister, who was on bail pending the verdict, blew his brains out on the steps under Albert Bridge, while the cabinet minister involved strolled off for a bathe while on holiday in France, ‘drowned’, and then turned up in Cape Town with a bird. All that was arranged by the brothers, because the Soviets had decided that they might still make use of this minister after all. It didn’t work out, though, because the South Africans blew the whistle on the ‘swimmer’ and two officers from the Yard went out and brought him home on the next plane. The public thought it was a terrific giggle but they hadn’t been told everything, otherwise the government would have looked even more stupid. A large quota of Soviet ‘trade delegates’ was returned to Moscow marked Not Wanted, and that appeared to be the end of it. In my view the ex-minister should have drawn a good ten; he unfortunately only got three, though, and did two at Ford open. Still, it was the end of his political career, and so I should bloody well hope.

  When asked at his trial how he had managed to swim all the way from Antibes to Cape Town the accused replied bitterly: ‘Well, I had my water-wings on, didn’t I?’ At least he had learned things – he knew better than to implicate the brothers, who had turned some evidence for the occasion, but by no means all of it.

  Now, though, over in Stoke Newington, people with nothing better to do could still gawp at the padlocked gates with weeds under them where the two Haweses had originally started up in business. The writing on the gates read: HAWES BROS, DEALERS IN NON-FERROUS SCRAP. There used to be another inscription underneath in semi-literate white letters: This Firm Runs The Manor, No Coppers Here.

  But the whole lot had been painted out now, similar to the folk that had run it.