The Home Secretary Will See You Now

by Graham Ison

  ‘Dudley Lavery’s been Home Secretary since the last election. He’s fifty-four according to Who's Who, and his wife, the late Elizabeth Lavery, was twenty years his junior. She was an actress by all accounts, and it was her first marriage: his second. Beyond that, we do not know a lot.’

  ‘Twenty years younger … ’ Tipper looked thoughtful, but said nothing further. ‘Any claims? Terrorists — anything of that sort?’

  ‘No, not so far. I don’t doubt that we’ll have the usual run of duff stuff within the next few hours.’

  ‘You say duff … ’ Gaffney nodded. ‘But could it be a terrorist attack?’ asked Tipper.

  ‘It doesn’t look like one — in my experience they use the bomb, the bullet, or, less frequently, the blade — but anything’s possible. I’ve got a couple of lads beavering away in Records, just to see what there is there.’

  ‘Right. What d’you want me to do then, sir?’

  ‘Come with me to sec the Home Secretary, Harry.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to get your head down, at least for a few hours?’

  ‘No!’ Gaffney laughed scornfully. ‘Keep going for a bit yet; at least until we can see where we’re going.’

  Tipper laughed. ‘Some hope of that. I’ve got a suspicion that this inquiry’s going to be a bit like marking time in marshmallow.’

  Dudley Lavery was a politician who believed that the show must go on; consequently Gaffney and Tipper had only to make the short walk through St James’s Park Underground

  station to Queen Anne’s Gate in order to interview him.

  ‘I am sorry to have to trouble you, sir,’ said Gaffney when the two detectives were shown into Lavery’s large office overlooking Petty France, ‘but there are one or two questions I have to ask.’

  Lavery led them towards the group of armchairs that occupied one corner of his office. ‘Of course, of course,’ he murmured. ‘I quite understand; you have your job to do. I only hope that you’re successful in bringing this fellow to book.’ He looked wistfully across the room as he sat down facing Gaffney. ‘Not that it’ll bring my wife back, of course, but it may save some other poor woman.’ He seemed already to have convinced himself that his wife had fallen victim to some itinerant strangler. He glanced at Tipper, appearing to notice him for the first time. ‘Er — I don’t think … ’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, sir. This is DCI Tipper; he’ll be assisting me in this inquiry.’

  ‘Good, good. Special Branch, of course?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Tipper. He didn’t think it necessary to tell Lavery he was a recent transfer and had spent the major part of his service investigating murder and other sordid crimes.

  Lavery glanced at his watch. ‘What can I do to assist you, Mr Gaffney?’

  ‘Perhaps you can tell me about yesterday evening. I understand from Selway that you rang your wife several times.’

  ‘Yes, that’s so.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m sorry … ?’ The Home Secretary looked vaguely mystified by Gaffney’s question.

  ‘I asked why you were ringing her, sir.’ He gazed at Lavery, his face devoid of expression.

  ‘Well I just wanted to make sure she was all right. I do get a bit concerned when she’s in the house on her own, you know.’

  ‘And yet you refused to have a police officer on duty there.’

  Lavery leaned back with the sort of expansive expression he usually reserved for fatuous questions in the House. ‘That’s a different matter. It is in fact a pointless exercise, having a

  policeman standing on the front doorstep of a house like mine. There’s a rear entrance, and windows on the back as well. You’d need a small regiment to protect it properly. Anyway, there’s an alarm system — ’

  ‘Which wasn’t set,’ said Gaffney quietly.

  ‘Wasn’t set, but surely … ?’

  Gaffney shook his head. ‘It wasn’t set.’

  ‘But I thought it must have malfunctioned.’ Lavery looked surprised. ‘Elizabeth would never — ’

  ‘Would never have what, sir?’

  ‘I’ve told her over and over again that she must keep the alarm set all the time, whether she’s in or out. And what about the panic buttons? There’s one in the bedroom.’

  ‘I know, sir, but we have a detective inspector who does nothing else but technical protection — you’ve met him, I believe’ — Lavery nodded — ‘and he spent a couple of hours going over your system early this morning. The alarm was definitely not set, and the panic buttons had not been activated — not a single one of them.’

  Lavery glanced at each of the detectives in turn. ‘But what does that mean?’

  ‘On the face of it, sir, it would appear that your wife knew who killed her, or admitted a total stranger to the house having first turned off the alarm, or having failed to set it. And at no time did she press a panic button.’

  Lavery gently and silently clapped his hands together two or three times before bringing them to his lips in an attitude of supplication. ‘I just don’t understand; I don’t understand at all.’

  ‘Do you know of anyone who was a regular visitor to your house, or for that matter, who could have called without causing a surprise?’

  ‘Well yes. There are two or three, maybe even more.’ ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well there’s my House of Commons secretary. She often pops in to collect mail — that sort of thing — and she helps out with Elizabeth’s mail, too; the political stuff emanating from the constituency. You know the sort of thing: opening

  fetes, judging baby contests, all the sort of rubbish that seems inextricably linked to governing the country.’ A brief smile of cynicism crossed his face. ‘Then there’s Edna. She’s the daily help; comes in every morning about eight to do the housework … ’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gaffney, ‘we met her this morning. Had to send her away, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Mmm, that won’t have pleased her. Did you tell her why, incidentally?’

  ‘She knew. Anyway, there was no point in not doing so; we’re going to have to talk to her at some time or other.’ ‘Why?’ Lavery looked up suddenly.

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Gaffney blandly, ‘but with any inquiry you have to keep asking questions until you get the right answers.’

  ‘Oh!’ Lavery did not appear too impressed by that basic tenet of criminal investigation.

  ‘Anyone else who might come and go?’

  ‘Only your chaps.’ Lavery was talking about the three Special Branch Officers, led by DCI Tony Lisle, whose task it was to guard the Home Secretary. Ironically they had no brief to guard his wife.

  ‘How many of these people had keys to your house, sir?’ ‘Mary Diver — she’s my House of Commons secretary that I mentioned — and Edna; oh, and of course, your chaps. I thought it was a good idea for them to have a key each.’ ‘And none of them has reported the loss of keys?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. It’s possible, I suppose.’

  ‘Perhaps we can get back to yesterday afternoon, sir.’ Gaffney glanced across at Tipper, busily making notes in his pocket book.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ murmured the Home Secretary.

  ‘Do you recall the first time you telephoned your wife?’ Lavery reflected for a few moments. ‘I suppose it must have been about half-past six, or thereabouts; I can’t be absolutely certain.’

  ‘And where did you phone from? The House presumably.’ ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you rang again at intervals?’

  ‘Yes, I did. A couple of times from my club, and then again from the House. Four times in all … ’ He paused. ‘Yes, four times would seem about right.’

  ‘You mentioned your club.’ Lavery nodded. ‘You went to your club during the evening, then?’

  ‘Yes, I did. That would have been at about seven o’clock, I suppose; perhaps a little later.’ He smiled at Gaffney. ‘I should think you’d do better asking John Selway. Don’t your chaps have to write down all these times for their diar
ies or their expenses, or whatever? John told me all about it one day; I think he was trying to enlist my aid to get it stopped.’

  ‘I dare say,’ said Gaffney. It was a constant irritation to CID officers of chief inspector rank and below to have to keep a minute-by-minute account of their working day, and they were cynically unimpressed to be told by officialdom that it was for their own protection. ‘May I ask why you went to your club?’

  ‘To get a bite to eat — a decent bite to eat — and to do a bit of reading in quiet and uninterrupted surroundings.’ Gaffney looked questioning. ‘I’m trying to read through the new Prisons Bill,’ continued Lavery, ‘and it’s so radical, so controversial, that we’ve got to get it right. In the House there’s always some crisis, some back-bencher with some moan, that breaks into what you’re doing. In the club it’s peaceful, and I can sit down and get through something like that in half the time.’

  ‘And so you telephoned your home twice from the club?’ ‘Yes, exactly so. Once before dinner and once after.’

  ‘What time did you return to the House?’

  ‘At about a quarter to ten, I suppose; in time for the ten o’clock division, anyway.’

  ‘And in time to make one more call to your wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If I can just go quickly through that again, sir,’ said Gaffney. ‘You telephoned your home four times during the course of the evening. The first call was made at about six-thirty from the House of Commons; then you went to

  your club for dinner at about seven, made two more calls from there, and then another from the House just before the ten o’clock division.’

  ‘That sounds about right.’

  ‘But it was not until then that you got Selway to find out if there was anything wrong?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why not sooner, sir? You waited about three and a half hours after the first call before asking police to look into the matter.’

  ‘It sounds deliberate when you put it like that, Mr Gaffney, but it wasn’t really until I got to the House for the division that it dawned on me how long she’d been out — or not answering

  -when she was supposed to be at home — ’

  ‘Then why — ?’

  ‘But by ten o’clock I was getting a bit concerned.’ Lavery spoke as though Gaffney hadn’t interrupted.

  ‘You were certain that your wife should have been at home?’

  Lavery smiled benignly. ‘As sure as one can ever be of one’s wife,’ he said. ‘She may have gone out somewhere — that’s what I thought. You never can tell. I imagined that she might have gone to the theatre — on a whim, you know

  -or maybe popped in to see one of her acting friends … ’ He spread his hands, the honest politician turning away the wrath of the aggressive interviewer, much as he would do on television.

  ‘Did she do that sort of thing often?’ Gaffney didn’t know why he’d asked that question; it wasn’t relevant.

  ‘Occasionally, yes, but she would normally leave a message with Mary, or with Charles Stanhope. He’s my private secretary here at the Home Office,’ he added, forestalling Gaffney’s next question. ‘It was he who showed you in when you arrived.’

  ‘There is one other thing,’ said Gaffney, changing tack once more. Lavery raised his eyebrows enquiringly. ‘I should like you to check over the house to see if anything has been stolen.’

  ‘You think this may have been a burglary then?’

  ‘I really don’t know at this stage,’ said Gaffney. ‘I don’t want to put you to any great trouble, but I need either to pursue that theory, or eliminate it.’

  ‘Quite so. Would, say, five o’clock do?’ He walked to the door of his office and opened it wide. ‘Charles, I’ve got nothing marked in for five o’clock, have I?’

  ‘No, Home Secretary,’ said a distant voice.

  ‘I’ll meet you at the house then — Cutler’s Mews, that is.’ He smiled. ‘I presume you want to be there, Mr Gaffney?’ Gaffney nodded. ‘Five o’clock, sir.’

  Chapter Three

  The two detectives strolled back to Scotland Yard, deciding against lunch in one of the several nearby pubs, mainly because Fleet Street’s finest were almost bound to be lying in wait, and it wouldn’t look good for the man investigating the untimely death of the Home Secretary’s wife to be seen drinking during the lunch-hour. Instead they bought sandwiches and cartons of soup and took them back to the office. The drizzle had now turned to sleet.

  The head of the Yard’s Press Bureau was talking to Detective Sergeant Claire Wentworth when Gaffney and Tipper entered the incident room. ‘Ah, John,’ he said, ‘just the man I want to see.’ He pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose, something he did on average about once a minute. ‘What the hell am I to tell these fellows?’

  ‘There’s nothing you can tell them,’ said Gaffney, ‘other than what they know already. Mrs Lavery was found dead at her home in Cutler’s Mews at about ten o’clock last night. Enquiries are continuing.’

  ‘Yeah, but they want to know what happened. How was she killed; was it a burglary; you know the sort of thing, John?’

  ‘Oh yes, I know the sort of thing, but I’m not prepared to release that sort of information. If we tell them she was strangled, we’ll have every nut in the world ringing up to confess that he did it. We’ve had a few already, claiming to have murdered her with anything between a tomahawk and a harpoon gun. No, I’m sorry, but that’s all they’re getting for the moment.’

  The Press Bureau chief nodded. ‘Okay, John, I’ll do my best to keep them at bay.’ He paused at the door. ‘If you can

  spare a couple of minutes this afternoon, just to have a few words with them down in Press Bureau, I’d be grateful.’

  ‘I bet you would.’ Gaffney laughed. ‘I’ll see what I can do, but I’m making no promises.’ Dismissing the Press from his mind, at least temporarily, he turned to Claire Wentworth. ‘What have you got?’

  He had entrusted Claire Wentworth with the onerous task of being office manager for the whole inquiry, and, looking round the incident room, it appeared that she had organised herself very rapidly. Extra telephones had been installed; filing cabinets of varying shapes and sizes acquired, and a huge whiteboard which had not been there yesterday already had messages scrawled on it. Her cool and unruffled glance of appraisal took in the orderly files of messages, the growing stack of statements, and finally the computer terminal: essential parts of any major investigation. ‘There is one file, sir, which could be of interest.’ She turned to the safe and spun the wheel of the combination lock. ‘This is it … ’ She handed Gaffney a pink folder. ‘Oh, there’s one other thing, sir … ’ She turned in her chair. ‘Tom, that message about the mud … ’ She held out a hand. A detective handed over a flimsy without comment, and she scanned it briefly. ‘Yeah, that’s the one.’ She looked up at Gaffney enquiringly. ‘Mud on the stairs matches the mud in the mews. That make sense, sir?’

  Gaffney shrugged. ‘Had to be really. I can see how this inquiry’s beginning to shape up already.’ He paused at the door. ‘Put in an action, Claire, to check who had keys to the Home Secretary’s house and whether anyone has lost them. Mr Lisle will be able to help you with that.’

  Gaffney sat down behind his desk, stifled a yawn and took out a packet of cigars. For a few moments he read the file which Claire Wentworth had given him. Then he yawned again and stretched his arms above his head. ‘Well, that’s a start, I suppose.’ He closed the file and pushed it in Tipper’s direction.

  With the skilled eye of the experienced detective, Tipper

  skimmed through it, absorbing the essentials and skipping the unnecessary, before replacing it on the desk and looking up. ‘What d’you reckon, guv’nor? Is this Drake bloke the usual nut-case, or is there something in it?’ He tapped the file with his forefinger.

  Gaffney shrugged. ‘Bit of both probably, Harry. There’s no doubt that his wife was arrested, and there’s no doubt that sh
e died in prison, on remand. I suppose that’s enough to turn anyone’s brain, but whether they’re just empty threats, or whether he meant it, is something we’re going to have to find out.’

  ‘Who’s this sergeant who interviewed him?’ asked Tipper, ‘and put the official frighteners on him, according to that … ?’ He pointed at the file. ‘Might be as well to have a chat with him first, before we go sailing in there.’

  ‘He can go and see him again, at least before we waste our time.’ Gaffney drew the file towards him and flicked it open. ‘Jenkins … ’ He looked thoughtful. ‘I’ve got a niggling suspicion at the back of my mind … ’ He pressed the switch on the intercom. ‘Claire, find I)S Jenkins if you can.’

  Ten minutes later Claire Wentworth appeared in the doorway. ‘DS Jenkins, sir,’ she said, ‘is on protection duty with the Foreign Secretary … ’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he’s in Tokyo. From there he goes to Kuala Lumpur and then on to Singapore. Due back Tuesday week.’ She smiled sweetly and closed the door behind her.

  ‘She’s got a lovely arse, that girl,’ said Tipper distantly, and then, turning to Gaffney with a grin, added: ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that today’s not your day, sir.’

  The houses in Sofia Road, Strcatham, had all been built in the far-off days of the 1930s, when the threat of war was just a disconcerting blemish on the horizon, and property like Number Seventeen was being offered — if the advertisements were anything to go by — to clean-cut, smiling young families for a moderate deposit and reasonable monthly repayments. The reality was, in all probability, very different, but even so,

  it was fairly certain that the families of fifty years or more ago, would not have recognised the Sofia Road of today. Not an inch of kerb space was free of cars, most of which were at least ten years old, some much older, and the ethnic origins of the majority of the residents had little in common with those who had moved into the houses when they were new.

  ‘Yes?’ A shining black face, utterly devoid of expression, peered at Detective Sergeant Mackinnon round a door that had been opened a mere six inches, and immediately recognised him as a representative of white man’s law.