The Home Secretary Will See You Now

by Graham Ison

  ‘But, sir — ’

  ‘I would much prefer it if Special Branch were to conduct the investigation. I know them and they know me.’ He glanced at Logan before speaking again. ‘The political ramifications could be enormous. I have to accept, of course, that there is no way that this will remain out of the media, but

  there will be some delicate enquiries, and … well, Special Branch are political people, aren’t they? Discreet, and they understand the political scene.’

  ‘They are not accustomed to investigating murders, Home Secretary,’ said Logan. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck with an inquiry into the death of Lavery’s wife, one that could be protracted, or worse, insoluble.

  Lavery dismissed the DAC’s excuse with a wave of the hand. ‘You undersell your Branch, Mr Logan. In my experience, they are very accomplished detectives. You wouldn’t argue with that, surely?’

  ‘Of course not, but my detectives are specialists in a very specialised field.’ He was about to add that they were also very busy, but realised in time that it would be impolitic to imply that the murder of Lavery’s wife did not have a very high priority.

  Lavery sighed. ‘I appreciate, James, that as police authority I must not interfere with matters of operational policing,’ he said to the Commissioner. ‘Even if it is my wife who is the subject of your inquiries,’ he added.

  Gilmore capitulated. Lavery had just said what he had been thinking, and wondering how to put into words. As usual, the acumen of the politician had defeated the staidness of the administrator. Lavery was absolutely right, of course, but it would not be clever for a Commissioner to make an enemy of a Home Secretary, particularly over what, to the politician, seemed a comparatively unimportant point of police procedure. Gilmore gave in gracefully: ‘Very well, if that is what you wish, Home Secretary, I shall arrange for Donald to assign one of his senior detectives to the case.’ ‘Thank you, James, I am most appreciative.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘And now I must go.’

  ‘Where, Home Secretary? Where do you propose going?’ Lavery pondered on the question. ‘Well, my club, I suppose.’

  Gilmore pursed his lips. ‘Have you nowhere else you could go?’ Lavery raised his eyebrows. ‘I was thinking that it might be prudent to have you under guard,’ continued the

  Commissioner. ‘Under closer guard than you have permitted us to provide hitherto.’ The comment was barbed, but Gilmore was sufficient of a tactician to realise that sooner or later someone was going to ask what the police had been doing if the Home Secretary’s wife could be murdered in her own home while her husband was occupied with affairs of state. Already he could visualise the editorials with their ‘What hope for the rest of us’ themes, and wanted to remind Lavery that it was he who had categorically refused to have a policeman stationed outside his door at Cutler’s Mews. It was not the first time that Gilmore — nor indeed Logan — had had to deal with such naivety among Cabinet Ministers who could not understand that their lives might be in danger simply because of the office they held, but it was the first time that it had had such dire consequences.

  Lavery raised his hand. ‘Point taken, James, but do you seriously think that someone was hoping to kill me and killed Elizabeth instead?’

  Gilmore shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Home Secretary, but I have no intention of risking it.’

  ‘All right, then. I have a friend — we were in chambers together — who I’m sure would put me up for a day or two, at least until I can get back into Cutler’s Mews. I shall be in the country at the weekend anyway. I wonder if I might use your telephone?’

  ‘Of course.’ Logan stood up and the Commissioner made to move.

  Lavery waved them down. ‘There’s no need to go,’ he said, and walked towards Logan’s huge desk. ‘I dial nine for an outside line, I presume,’ he said, taking out his pocket book.

  ‘It’s a little more complicated than that,’ said Logan. ‘What’s the number? I’ll get it for you.’

  Chapter Two

  Detective Chief Superintendent John Gaffney drove from his Richmond flat in his own car. It took him about twenty-five minutes to reach Scotland Yard, and after a brief and acrimonious exchange with a security guard who disputed his right to leave his car in the underground car park — an exchange in which the security guard came second — he made his way to the eighteenth floor.

  ‘Mr Gaffney,’ said the Commissioner, ‘I have agreed, somewhat reluctantly I may say, to have this matter investigated by Special Branch.’ Gaffney nodded. ‘But that is purely cosmetic. It will really be an SO 13 inquiry in the sense that you will use all their resources, and incidentally, as many more as you need. I don’t have to say that this matter has to be resolved and resolved quickly. I’m sure you understand that?’

  ‘Yes, I do, sir.’ Gaffney realised only too well that if it went wrong he would get the blame, but if it turned out successfully, the Anti-Terrorist Branch would get the credit. ‘Where is the Home Secretary now, sir?’

  ‘Staying with a friend of his, another barrister. But you needn’t worry about him: the place is surrounded by police.’ ‘I’m not worried about him, sir,’ said Gaffney, ‘but I shall need to interview him.’

  ‘Oh? What for?’

  This Commissioner had never been a detective and at times it showed. Gaffney shot a glance at his DAC, standing behind Gilmore, but Logan’s face remained impassive. ‘Well, sir, the assumption seems to have been made that this is a terrorist killing, but from what little I’ve heard there is nothing to support that theory so far.’

  ‘Mmm!’ The Commissioner fingered his moustache. ‘Yes, well, go carefully, Gaffney. It is the Home Secretary you’re dealing with.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Gaffney patiently, ‘I know.’ He was mildly amused by the awe in which Cabinet Ministers were held by certain senior officers, the more so as politicians seemed on the whole to have little regard for them in return. Gaffney had spent the three years prior to his promotion guarding the Prime Minister, and had come to the conclusion that it was connected with the Honours Lists: who got awards and who didn’t. At the top of this scale were the chief constables wanting knighthoods: Gaffney called it the ‘K’ factor.

  Cutler’s Mews resembled a police reunion. There were four police cars in the narrow cobbled alleyway, and two or three white vans, at least some of which had the justification of belonging to the technicians involved in the inquiry. There were uniformed policemen standing about chatting, and the front door of Number Seven was wide open, releasing a shaft of light on to the DPG vehicle that had been first on the scene … and was still there. On the doorstep were the local Divisional Chief Superintendent and a chief inspector in uniform clutching a clipboard.

  ‘Hallo, John,’ said the Chief Superintendent. ‘Nice to see the Branch here eventually.’

  ‘I have been getting my instructions from the Commissioner,’ said Gaffney drily, ‘who, incidentally, is about five minutes behind me. Almost his last words’ — Gaffney broke off to look around at the widespread police presence — ‘emphasised the need for discretion.’ Engines were starting even before he reached the sitting room.

  Dick Campbell, the Commander of SOD, the Anti-Terrorist Branch, levered himself out of an armchair as Gaffney entered the room. ‘Hallo, John, good to see you. I’ve just been talking to the Commissioner on the phone. He told me — in very guarded language — that you’ve caught this one.’ He laughed.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Gaffney, ‘but you don’t have to look so pleased about it.’

  Campbell laughed. ‘Oh, but I am, John, I am.’ He became serious again. ‘It’s going to be a bastard; I’ve got that feeling in my bones. Frankly, John, I don’t think that this is a terrorist job; it just hasn’t got the feel about it. I’ve never known manual strangulation to be the terrorist’s MO — not in circumstances like this.’ He shrugged and thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘Needless to say, anything I can do to help, just say the word. You’ve got all the technical you n
eed; keep it for as long as you want it. Pamela Hatcher’s upstairs, taking temperatures and all that sort of thing. You’d better have a look at the body before it’s shifted.’

  Campbell led the way upstairs and into the main bedroom, now illuminated by floodlamps. On the floor, near the body, a brown-haired woman sat cross-legged. She wore jeans and a baggy sweater, and appeared oblivious to everyone else in the room, as she peered through her gold-rimmed spectacles at the clip-board on which she was making notes.

  ‘Pamela, this is John Gaffney from Special Branch.’

  ‘Oh, hallo.’ The pathologist got nimbly to her feet, and, after juggling with her clip-board, stuck a hand awkwardly in Gaffney’s direction. ‘I’m just about finished here.’

  Gaffney shook hands with her. He reckoned she was about forty-seven or forty-eight years old, older than he had expected, although, with the reputation she had acquired in the field of forensic medicine, she could hardly have been younger.

  ‘John is the officer in the case,’ said Campbell.

  ‘Oh?’ She took off her glasses and dropped them into her handbag, then she lifted her single pigtail away from her sweater and let it fall again. ‘Unusual — Special Branch investigating murders, isn’t it? Still, I suppose it makes a difference, being Lavery’s wife.’

  Gaffney smiled. ‘To us, it seems it does,’ he said. ‘But not to you, of course.’

  Pamela Hatcher laughed. ‘Can’t do really, can it? A corpse is a corpse, whoever it is. What can I tell you?’

  ‘How, and how long? That’ll do for a start.’

  ‘The first one’s easy — well easier. I’m almost sure it’s manual strangulation. Look here.’ Gaffney smiled at the assumption that everyone else had made, but he knew that pathologists needed more proof than what appeared, at first sight, to be the cause of death. Pamela Hatcher bent down and pointed with her pencil at the marks on the neck. There were four round bruises, each about half an inch across, evenly spaced on the left of the throat, while on the other side, under the jaw, was one larger impression, along with some contusions and scratches. ‘Single-handed, by a right-handed assailant, almost certainly.’ She stood up. ‘Of course all of that is subject to the results of the post-mortem. As for how long — ’ She paused to tap her teeth with her pencil. ‘Well, that’s a bit more imprecise, as you know, but given that it’s strangulation, that the heating’s on and there are no windows open, probably between six this evening and ten o’clock. Sorry I can’t do better than that.’

  Gaffney smiled. ‘That’ll have to do,’ he said. In common with all detectives, he was always mildly irritated by the occasional television pathologist who, after thirty seconds’ examination, would stand up and give an exact time of death. ‘Is that how the body was?’ Gaffney gestured at the corpse.

  ‘No. I had to turn it to get temperature readings, but your chaps got photographs before I started.’ She began to put her things away in her case. ‘Where will you take it — Horseferry Road, presumably?’

  Campbell nodded. ‘Yes, that’s our local.’ He saw the pathologist to the front door and then returned to the bedroom. ‘Not a lot I can do for you now, John,’ he said. ‘These lads are better at it than we are.’ He nodded towards the small group of photographers, fingerprint officers and scenes-of-crime men who were now waiting to get to work. ‘If I were you, I’d just take a seat and let them get on with it. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Or later today, I should say.’

  ? ? ?

  It was eight o’clock in the morning — some ten hours since the discovery of the body — before Gaffney was able to declare himself reasonably satisfied with the scientific examination of the Home Secretary’s London home. It was gloomy daylight outside, but the slight drizzle did nothing to deter the gaggle of reporters who huddled at the entrance to Cutler’s Mews, attracted there by some journalistic sixth sense. The steady hum of rush-hour traffic was a long way away, and there seemed to be a vacuum of silence around Gaffney and his team.

  The photographers, having taken shots from every conceivable angle of everything that might be of the slightest value, had departed to start preparing their prints. The fingerprint officers — among the most senior at the Yard — had dusted everything with their powder, and lifted one or two of the more interesting impressions to be taken away and examined at leisure.

  Then had come the liaison officers from the Forensic Science Laboratory who had searched for anything which a scientist might be able to connect with the killer: hairs, fibres, dust, urine, excreta, semen, saliva; over the years they had found them all, but on this occasion the only thing to excite their interest was a small deposit of mud on the stairs. They had carefully placed it in a plastic bag for analysis, but one of the detectives was prepared to put money on its having been left there by a policeman rather than by the killer.

  It was with a certain amount of misgiving that Gaffney finally authorised the removal of Elizabeth Lavery’s body to the Horseferry Road mortuary to await Pamela Hatcher’s post-mortem examination later in the day. Then he set his small team of detectives to work.

  Skilled at searching scenes of crime, the Anti-Terrorist Branch officers carefully carried out a visual examination of the house. Each room was visited in turn, but there was nothing for them to find. Everything was as it should be: no sign of a struggle; no sign of a forced entry; no sign of a hurried departure.

  In the bedroom where Mrs Lavery’s body had been found,

  one astute searcher on hands and knees found a piece of paper under the bed.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Gaffney.

  The detective sat back on his haunches and examined his find. ‘It’s a House of Commons order-paper, sir. A week old!’

  ‘Huh!’ Gaffney scoffed. ‘His daily isn’t very good at her job.’

  ‘It’s got a phone number on it, sir.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Gaffney wearily, ‘stick it in a bag and take it back with you.’ He sighed. ‘Bloody marvellous, isn’t it?’ he said, addressing no one in particular. ‘A murder, and all I’ve got is a teaspoonful of mud and a week-old order-paper — which isn’t exactly a surprise in an MP’s house.’

  It was half-past eight. One of the two Special Branch officers whom Gaffney had had sent down to guard the house against sightseers — police as well as public — now appeared in the sitting room, ‘Your car’s here, sir,’ he said.

  ‘You rang, sir?’ Detective Chief Inspector Harry Tipper grinned, closed Gaffney’s door and, uninvited, dropped into one of the armchairs.

  ‘Sorry about cancelling your leave, Harry.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Tipper. ‘I was only decorating. The missus reckons it’s a set-up, and that I arranged a recall to get out of it.’

  ‘I wish that’s all it was,’ said Gaffney. ‘Last night, the Home Secretary’s wife was found murdered at their London home, Cutler’s Mews … ’

  ‘Yeah, I know. It’s in the papers, and it was on the news … breakfast television.’ Tipper gestured at the pile of daily newspapers that Gaffney had had brought in but had not had time to look at.

  Gaffney nodded. ‘The Home Secretary tried to ring his wife two or three times during the evening, and got no reply. He was trapped at the House apparently: a three-liner at ten o’clock; so he got Selway to — ’

  ‘Who’s Selway?’ asked Tipper, interrupting.

  ‘DS Selway; he’s on protection with the Home Sec.’ Tipper

  nodded. ‘Anyway, he got Selway to try and find out if the phone was duff, or she’d gone out, or what. Selway got the Diplomatic Protection Group to pay a visit. They broke in … ’ He paused to sift through some copy messages on his desk. ‘Inspector Franklin to be precise — he was the DPG duty officer — and he found madam on the bedroom floor, apparently strangled. That’s confirmed by the pathologist’s preliminary examination. No sign of forcible entry, and a full examination of the scene has produced precisely sod-all in the way of evidence.’

  Tipper shook h
is head slowly. ‘There must be something. Any contact between two items and you’ve got a trace of each left on the other.’ He smiled.

  So did Gaffney. ‘I know all about Locard’s principle of exchange,’ he said. ‘It’s finding the bloody things that’s the problem. All we have is a trace of mud off the stairs, and a House of Commons order-paper.’ He sucked through his teeth. ‘Big deal.’

  ‘Any sign of sexual interference?’ asked Tipper.

  ‘Pamela Hatcher says no.’

  ‘Anything missing?’

  ‘What are you thinking? Frustrated burglary?’

  Tipper nodded. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Not as far as we can tell. I’m going to try getting the Home Secretary round there this morning to have a look, but there was none of the usual signs of a break-in.’

  ‘House-to-house?’ Tipper examined his fingernails. He shared the view of many other policemen that house-to-house enquiries were cumbersome, used a lot of manpower and were rarely productive; in short, they were a last resort.

  ‘Got a team out starting about now. Don’t hold out much hope though, Harry. I suspect that most of Lavery’s neighbours will be out during the day, and it’s our luck that the au pairs, domestics and home helps won’t have been there at the crucial time.’

  ‘And what was the crucial time, guv’nor?’

  ‘Pamela Hatcher puts it between six in the evening and ten o’clock last night.’

  ‘And what time did the Home Secretary make his first call to his wife — the first one she didn’t answer, that is?’ ‘Don’t know, Harry. I haven’t been able to see him yet, but that’s one of several points to be cleared up.’

  Tipper looked blankly out of the window. ‘I thought I’d finished with murders when I got transferred to the rarefied atmosphere of Special Branch,’ he said. ‘Oh well!’ He grinned and turned to face Gaffney. ‘Here we go again. What have we got, sir?’