The Home Secretary Will See You Now

by Graham Ison

  ‘Mr Drake live here?’

  ‘Upstairs.’ The woman turned and walked away, leaving the front door ajar.

  Mackinnon and Detective Constable Paul Bishop made their way up the uncarpeted staircase to the first floor. The first door they came to had half a postcard pinned to the middle of it. It bore the single name ‘Drake’.

  Mackinnon rapped on the wooden panel; there was no reply. He tried the handle and found that the door was unlocked. ‘Hallo!’ he said. ‘Anyone there?’ There was still no reply, and they moved slowly into the room, looking cautiously around; this was, after all, the residence of a man who had made written threats to murder the Home Secretary.

  Mackinnon looked round the room, at the threadbare carpet, the dirty curtains against dirty windows, and at the settee and the armchairs that were worn and probably flea-ridden. On the far side of the room, there was a half-open door from which most of the paint had long since peeled; Mackinnon pushed it gently and peered in. It was the kitchen, littered with dirty crockery and greasy pans on every available surface, which included a board over the bath. ‘Give me a hand with this, Bish,’ said Mackinnon.

  ‘What arc you going to do, skip?’

  ‘Have a look under it. We’d look a bit bloody silly if his body was eventually found in there, wouldn’t we?’

  Together they lifted the board and looked beneath it, but it was empty. The two detectives retreated to the sitting room.

  ‘Christ!’ said Mackinnon. ‘What a bloody stench.’ He waved a hand in front of his face.

  ‘Is that it, then?’ Bishop stood in the centre of the room, hands on hips, surveying an unmade divan in the comer.

  ‘I reckon so, but where the hell’s Drake?’

  ‘He’s certainly not here. Perhaps he’s done a runner.’

  ‘We’d better start with the friendly lady who let us in.’ Mackinnon shrugged and made for the door.

  The woman appeared in the doorway of her room, two children clinging to her skirts and staring up at the policemen with great wide white eyes and open mouths. ‘Yes?’ she asked flatly.

  ‘We’re police officers,’ said Mackinnon. She nodded; she had known that. ‘We’re looking for Mr Drake. D’you know where he is?’

  ‘No!’

  And you wouldn’t tell us if you did, thought Mackinnon. ‘When did you last see him, then?’

  The woman appeared to give the question some thought. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘A week, maybe two.’ She shrugged again and started to close the door.

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ said Mackinnon as the door was shut firmly in his face. ‘I’ll get the Commissioner to send you one of his special letters of commendation for your valuable assistance.’

  ‘What now, skip?’ asked Bishop.

  ‘We try all those other doors, mate, and see if anyone has any idea where he might be. Then we take his room apart, bit by bit.’

  ‘Don’t we need a warrant for that?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mackinnon banged on another door.

  The face of an Indian peered furtively out at the detectives. He proved to be the only other occupant of the house in residence at the time. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Police,’ said Mackinnon in a tired voice. ‘We’re looking for Mr Drake.’

  ‘Not here. Across there.’ The Indian pointed to the door of Drake’s room.

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Mackinnon nodded wearily. ‘He’s not there.’ ‘Ah! Gone out perhaps.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’ There were times when Mackinnon wondered how he put up with the monotony of a detective’s job.

  ‘Yesterday morning.’ The Indian paused. ‘I think … ’ Then he nodded. ‘That’s right. It was yesterday morning.’ ‘What was he doing? Going to work?’

  ‘Oh no. Captain Drake does not work — ’

  ‘Captain Drake?’

  ‘Yes. He is Captain Drake.’

  ‘What’s he a captain of?’ asked Mackinnon.

  ‘I don’t know, but he’s always called “the captain”.’ Bishop touched Mackinnon’s elbow. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘It’s on the file. He was an army officer; got the boot for dipping into the mess funds.’

  Mackinnon laughed and turned back to the Indian. ‘He doesn’t work, you say?’

  ‘UB40 business — unemployed.’ The Indian raised his eyes to the ceiling.

  ‘What was he doing — yesterday morning — when you saw him?’

  ‘Going out. He had his overcoat on.’

  ‘Did he speak?’

  ‘He just said “Good morning”.’

  Mackinnon slipped a photograph out of his pocket and showed it to the Indian, but said nothing.

  ‘That’s him,’ said the man, ‘but he’s older. That must have been taken a long time ago.’

  Mackinnon turned the print over and looked at the date on the back. ‘Ten years ago,’ he said, ‘but at least you recognised him.’ It meant that others might recognise him from the only photograph the police had, if they had to start searching for him. Mackinnon had an open mind; it was just possible that a man who had several times threatened to kill the Home Secretary might have killed his wife instead.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Mackinnon. ‘Come on Bish, let’s go and have a poke about in his room.’

  ‘What about the warrant?’

  Mackinnon pushed the door of Drake’s room open. ‘I’m the Sergeant,’ he said, as he walked in. ‘If it all goes pear-shaped, it’s down to me. Anyway, who ever heard of a warrant to do Drake’s drum?’ He laughed at his own joke, but Bishop couldn’t see the funny side of it.

  They spent a desultory half-hour examining Drake’s meagre belongings without furthering their knowledge of the man or his whereabouts.

  ‘You’ve read the file, Bish. What’s it all about?’ Mackinnon made no excuses for not having researched what he saw as a mundane job. Hundreds of people wrote threatening letters to the Queen, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, and to members of both Houses of Parliament. Most of those letters finished up in Special Branch where they were filed. Occasionally the more persistent writers would be seen and warned, but for the most part there was no real harm in any of them. In most cases the spidery handwriting extended the full width of the paper, leaving no margins and in the experience of the police this was usually indicative of some mental instability. Often the rambling narratives rehearsed some real or imagined grievance, or claimed some kinship, legitimate or otherwise, with the Royal Family, and were for the most part incomprehensible. But once in a while, the writer would enclose a bullet, or make a half-hearted attempt at constructing a letter-bomb; then the police would act with great urgency, as they would with cases like Drake who had simply written, about three times a week, ‘You killed my wife — I will kill you.’ He had signed the letters and put his full address at the top. Consequently he was seen and warned. For a while they stopped, but recently they had begun again, albeit from a different address — Sofia Road — and Mackinnon had supposed that, in Drake’s view, that made it all right; gave him a fresh start, so to speak. Now with the murder of the Home Secretary’s wife, Drake became of sudden interest. Perhaps he had decided to exact an eye for an eye … or a wife for a wife.

  ‘Drake’s wife killed their ten-year-old son. It was a mercy

  killing really; he was suffering from some incurable wasting disease. One night she couldn’t take any more and smothered him with a pillow. The doctor called the police simply because Mrs Drake told him what she’d done.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ Mackinnon was opening and closing drawers in a varnished chest. ‘Broadmoor?’

  ‘Didn’t get that far. Remanded in custody. Application for bail to High Court judge in chambers, refused. Plea to Home Secretary — ’

  ‘Refused, sub judiceV

  ‘Didn’t get a chance. She hanged herself in Brixton. Drake’s twisted mind has blamed Lavery ever since.’

  ‘How long ago was all this, Bish?’

  ‘Three years, skip.’


  ‘But Lavery wasn’t Home Secretary then.’

  ‘I know. Does it matter?’

  ‘Not a lot.’ Mackinnon removed a large envelope from the drawer he was searching and opened it. ‘Hallo … and what have we got here?’ He emptied the envelope’s contents on to the top of the chest of drawers. ‘Newspaper cuttings.’ He started to sort through them with his forefinger. ‘Well, well, well! Would you look at that. This bloke’s been doing some research.’ The cuttings were about Lavery and dated from his appointment as Home Secretary, but more interesting to the two detectives, were cuttings about Elizabeth Lavery’s acting career when she had been known as Elizabeth Fairfax, which clearly Drake had had to obtain from the back-numbers departments of newspaper offices.

  ‘Now what do we do?’ asked Bishop.

  ‘Find him,’ said Mackinnon, ‘with a little help from our friends.’

  It was about half a mile to the police station in Streatham High Road, and the station officer, whose single medal riband indicated that he had at least twenty-two years’ service, smiled as Mackinnon mentioned Drake. ‘Well, well, our friend Captain Drake,’ he said. ‘And what has he been up to?’

  ‘That’s what we’re anxious to find out,’ said Mackinnon.

  The station officer grinned. ‘You don’t think he’s got anything to do with the murder of the Home Secretary’s wife, surely?’

  ‘Why should you ask that?’ Mackinnon’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Because he’s always in here, demanding that we arrest the Home Secretary for murder. He’s got some bee in his bonnet about Lavery having been responsible for the death of Mrs Drake. There’s no harm in him, though; I reckon his brain’s gone after that business with his son and his wife.’

  ‘I wish I had your confidence,’ said Mackinnon.

  The Sergeant shook his head and made a sucking noise through his teeth. ‘I can’t see him killing anyone, not old Ernie Drake.’

  ‘Thank you for your expert advice,’ said Mackinnon with a sarcasm that was lost on his uniformed colleague, ‘but do you have any idea where we might find him? Where does he usually get to?’

  ‘As far as I know, he spends most nights in the Sofia Arms — top of his road — and then goes home to bed. I reckon if you have a word with the landlord up there, he’ll put old Drake in the clear. Might save yourself a lot of bother.’ He pushed his thumbs under the buttoned flaps of his breast pockets and nodded confidently. He was clearly a man who placed a high priority on saving himself a lot of bother.

  Chapter Four

  A coterie of pressmen still waited despairingly at the entrance to Cutler’s Mews, their shoulders hunched against the cold, and their inadequate anoraks providing little protection against the biting sleet. They stamped their feet and chain-smoked. They were waiting for the Home Secretary to return to his house because their picture editors wanted it on the front page. But so far there had been no sign of Lavery.

  The arrival of Gaffney and Tipper at a quarter to five had caused a flurry of interest which waned immediately the photographers recognised them. Gaffney was unhappy that only one policeman had been stationed at the entrance to the mews, and knew that he would be swept aside in the rush the moment the Home Secretary drove in at five o’clock.

  ‘Get on the phone to the DPG,’ said Gaffney to the DC who opened the door of Lavery’s house. ‘Better still, the local nick. I want two or three PCs down here to prevent that lot running amok.’ He indicated the group of miserable photographers. ‘If it’s left to one PC they’ll be all over the house, given half a chance.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better if I gave Central Command Complex a call, sir, then they could send the nearest unit?’

  ‘And broadcast it to the world in the process,’ said Gaffney caustically. ‘Get hold of someone at the nick, like the duty officer … ’ He walked into the sitting room, continuing to issue instructions over his shoulder. ‘Tell him to get somebody to report to me here urgently, but don’t tell them why. And tell them to use personal radio, not main force, or we’ll have the rest of bloody Fleet Street down here.’

  Tipper was standing in the centre of the room, his hands in his pockets, and doing what he always did at a murder scene: getting the flavour, he called it. ‘The bedroom’s immediately over this room, sir, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Gaffney dropped wearily into one of the armchairs. ‘Of course, I was forgetting, you’ve not been here before, have you? We’ll have a look round when the great man’s been and gone. And after that, Harry, I’m going home to bed. I’m sure it’ll all look much easier tomorrow.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Tipper without enthusiasm. ‘But you know what they say, guv’nor: every day further away from a murder, the harder it gets to solve.’

  Gaffney snorted. ‘A great help you arc, Harry,’ he said.

  Blue light suddenly reflected on the wall opposite where Gaffney was sitting, and he leaped from his chair. ‘What the bloody hell … ?’

  ‘Looks like the feet have arrived,’ said Tipper laconically. ‘The feet’ was the term he always used to describe the Uniform Branch.

  An inspector appeared in the doorway of the sitting room and saluted. ‘Mr Gaffney, sir?’ He looked enquiringly at the two detectives. ‘One territorial support group, sir. That’s one inspector, two sergeants and twenty. Where d’you want them, sir?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Gaffney. ‘Don’t you know there’s a bloody war on?’

  ‘War, sir?’ The Inspector looked mystified.

  ‘Yes, against crime. I want two or three men to make sure that that bedraggled and pathetic group of pressmen at the entrance to the mews behaves itself, that’s all. It’s not a bloody riot, unless you’re thinking of starting one.’ He looked out of the window. The mews was filled with three transit vans, each with its blue light spinning aimlessly. ‘It might interest you to know that in about five minutes from now, the Home Secretary will be attempting to get in here, and given that the Metropolitan Police have already allowed his wife to be murdered, he’s probably going to look on your little effort as a classic example of closing the stable door after the bloody

  horse has bolted. So I suggest that you do something about it. Now!’

  The Inspector left rapidly, and shortly afterwards the transit vans started reversing into the main road, captured on film by a team of photographers with nothing better to do.

  The Home Secretary was late in arriving, by some twenty minutes or so, which was no more than Gaffney had expected. The Press, duly restrained by the four policemen who had been placed at the entrance to the mews by the chastened Inspector, were galvanised into action. They took as many photographs as possible, feverishly wiping their lenses clear of sleet between exposures, except for one unfortunate whose camera was trapped by the unyielding zip-fastener of the anorak beneath which it had been placed for protection against the inclement weather. The foul language which this provoked would, under normal circumstances, have warranted proceedings for the use of obscene language likely to occasion a breach of the peace, but as the speaker was a woman the PC nearest to her decided not to bother; it was what his instructor at the police training school used to call inverted sexism.

  Dudley Lavery seemed more strained than when Gaffney had seen him that morning, as though the reality of his wife’s death was at last beginning to register.

  ‘I don’t wish to detain you any longer than necessary, sir, but I should be grateful if you would look round, just to satisfy yourself — and indeed me — that nothing has been taken.’

  Lavery nodded absently, and peered around the sitting room as though in the house of a stranger. He wandered back into the hall and then slowly, like a man labouring up a steep path, made his way upstairs.

  At the door of his bedroom he paused, staring round reflectively. He remained like that for some time, and then turned. ‘Where exactly?’ he asked.

  ‘Just there, sir.’ Gaffney pointed to where Elizabeth Lavery’s body had been found by Inspector F
ranklin.

  The Home Secretary gazed at the spot for some time,

  as if trying to visualise the sight of his dead wife’s body. Eventually he looked up with a sigh, like a man who has broken off praying. ‘Everything seems to be in order, Mr Gaffney. Perhaps I should just have a look in the dressing table; it was where my wife kept most of her jewellery.’ He walked across the room and started to open and close drawers. ‘I told her not to; told her to put it all in a safety deposit box, but she wouldn’t listen.’ He took out a leather jewel case and opened it. He poked around among the pearl necklaces and the ear-rings and the brooches as though searching for something. He tutted. ‘Careless,’ he said, half to himself. He closed the box and put it back in the drawer; then he shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I suppose it’s all there; I don’t really know what she had and didn’t have.’ He opened another drawer, vaguely moving the contents about, and pulled out an ornate chain. ‘I’ve not seen that before,’ he said. It was about thirty inches in length, with a medallion at one end. ‘Looks like one of her theatre props.’

  ‘May I have a look, sir?’ asked Tipper. He took it from Lavery and turned it over in his hands, examining the medallion. ‘I think you’re probably right.’ He returned it to Lavery who dropped it back into the drawer.

  It was a painful process, and it took over an hour, following Lavery from room to room as he reminisced rather than searched, until they found themselves, once more, at the front door. ‘I’m pretty sure there’s nothing missing, Mr Gaffney.’ Lavery appeared to come out of his reverie, ready to face the outside world again.

  ‘Thank you for your assistance, sir.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Lavery. He paused, his hand on the banisters. ‘I was thinking about the funeral. When do you suppose that she … that the body will be released?’

  ‘It’s a matter for the coroner, of course, but — ’

  ‘I know that,’ Lavery snapped. Then he sighed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, I … It does rather depend on when you chaps have no further need of it, doesn’t it?’ The television smile came into play again.