The Home Secretary Will See You Now

by Graham Ison

  ‘Yeah, okay!’ said Fox. ‘But not before I put you on the sheet for drug smuggling, and other assorted offences … ’ He looked across at Gaffney. ‘I suppose you’d like to tack your murder on, just for good measure?’

  Gaffney shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  Masters held up his hands. ‘All right, all right, but this is bloody duress, you know.’

  ‘You could well be right,’ said Fox. ‘I’ll send for Amnesty International, if you like.’

  ‘We’d arranged a few runs over, but it’s bloody dicey … ’ ‘But worth it?’

  ‘Yeah! Then I met this Liz bird.’

  ‘By which I take it you mean the Home Secretary’s wife?’ Masters smiled. ‘Yeah! It was dead lucky an’ all. It was after that job you did me for.’

  ‘The one you got away with, you mean?’

  ‘No, straight, Mr Fox, that was a diabolical liberty, and you know it.’ Fox raised his eyebrows and waited patiently. ‘Yes, well, the day I was acquitted’ — he laid heavy emphasis on that word — ‘she was at the Bailey to meet her old man, Lavery, what defended me.’

  Fox nodded. ‘Yes, Colin, I do remember.’

  ‘Well, I reckon she fancied me — ’

  ‘You are a conceited bastard,’ scoffed Fox.

  Masters looked hurt. ‘Well, I proved it, didn’t I?’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘After that traumatic experience — ’

  ‘What traumatic experience? And where d’you get a word like that, anyway?’ It was skilful interrogation — a matter of nice judgement — to let Masters think that what he was saying was not too important, but Fox was careful, always, not to overplay it.

  ‘After the trial. I went off down the South of France for a bit of a break. Play the tables, an’ that.’ Masters grinned. ‘Down some place called Le Trayas’ — he pronounced it ‘lee trays’ — ‘for a few weeks like.’ He paused to lick his lips. ‘Well, I was walking along the beach one morning, and I see her, this Liz bird.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Nothing. Just lying there. Sunbathing.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘So I sat down beside her.’

  ‘And frightened Miss Muffet away?’

  ‘No. I just says to her, “Remember me?”. Well, she gives me the once-over, pretending she don’t know me from Adam. So I says to her like it was up the Bailey, and give her a reminder. Then she says yes she thought she remembered.’ ‘Yeah, go on.’ Fox looked sceptical.

  ‘I asked her what she was doing out there, and she says she’d been doing some filming. Then I remembered that she’d been an actress … so I heard.’

  ‘So I heard, too,’ said Fox. ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I asked her if she was on holiday after that.’

  ‘What are you talking about now, for God’s sake?’

  ‘No, sorry. She said that the filming was finished, sec. Sorry, I missed that bit.’

  ‘All right, get on with it.’ Fox looked across at Gaffney and shook his head wearily.

  ‘She says she was staying at some carl’s place — friend of her old man’s — Earl Barclay. So I says what about a few sherbets — ’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Well, you know me, Mr Fox.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ murmured Fox.

  ‘So we went to a bar and got a few down us, and then I invited her up the villa — ’

  ‘What villa? We are still in the South of France with this little yarn, aren’t we?’

  ‘Oh yeah. I’d took a villa, see. Well, it’s more private than a hotel. Anyway, people nick things in a hotel.’

  ‘God Almighty!’ said Fox. ‘Doubtless you will now tell me that one thing led to another.’

  Masters grinned obscenely. ‘Had a very nice little week in that villa, I can tell you. Couldn’t keep her hands off of me. Fair wore me out she did.’ He glanced at his fingernails. ‘Like a bit of rough, some of these high-class birds,’ he said.

  ‘So I’ve heard. What then?’

  ‘She had to go back to the Smoke, to her old man. So I says why not come down the villa in Spain. Well, she jumps at that and says when. Course, it struck me then … ’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘What a bloody gift she was. Put a kilo of cocaine in her gear and we’re home and dry. No bleeding Customs is going to turn her over, not the Home Secretary’s missus.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Fox. Privately, he thought it was a very good idea. ‘How did she explain that away to her husband — a week in Spain?’

  ‘She spun him some fanny about advising on a film that was being made. At least, that’s what she said she’d told him.’

  ‘And was there a film?’

  Masters laughed scornfully. ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘And how many times did she bring a consignment back here?’

  Masters looked pained. ‘Only the once, and that’s the bastard that’s gone adrift.’

  ‘And what happened about the pick-up at the airport?’ ‘Well, like I said, I give Farrell a bell and he was supposed to get some finger to nick her case at Heathrow.’

  ‘And how many times d’you think that someone was going to get away with nicking her case before she started to notice?’ Masters looked slightly shocked. ‘Oh, it was only a one-off,’ he said. ‘Mind you, I did think about putting it to her straight; asking her to take a parcel back for me … ’

  Fox laughed. ‘You’re a bigger prat than I thought,’ he said, but he wondered, nevertheless, whether Masters might just have got away with it. He stood up suddenly. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I shall come back and talk to you again later. Meantime, we’ll have a statement typed up for you to sign.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You heard. It’s all going down in writing. If you’re thinking about denying it all in the future, at least I’ll have your signature on a bit of paper.’ Fox paused at the door. ‘By the way, Colin,’ he said, ‘the other tape-recorder was on.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Fox.

  ‘It’s more than I have,’ said Gaffney.

  ‘If Masters hasn’t got that cocaine, and Farrell hasn’t got it, and setting aside that anyone working for either of them would have taken the suicidal course of nicking it, the chances are that it is still somewhere in Elizabeth Lavery’s possessions.’

  Gaffney looked thoughtful. ‘She wasn’t a user,’ he said. ‘There was nothing in Pamela Hatcher’s report about traces of coke in the body.’ He paused. ‘And we didn’t find it at the scene of the crime.’

  ‘You weren’t looking for it, were you? If you’d been searching the Home Secretary’s house for drugs’ — he broke off and laughed sharply — ‘it would have been a different story. But what did you have? You started off with terrorist overtones — which might still come to something, I suppose, but that’s your department — and then considered a disturbed burglar. Anyone else would have taken the same sort of action. You were looking for evidence that would enable you to convict a murderer, not a drug-runner, for Christ’s sake. And let’s face it, John, there was not the remotest suggestion at that stage of the game that it would come to this.’

  Gaffney nodded slowly, unwilling to admit that he had erred. In all conscience, he knew that he hadn’t; that any other detective would have taken the same line of investigation that he had. ‘So what do we do? Look for it?’

  ‘Got to, haven’t we? Is Lavery back in residence yet?’

  ‘Yes … but it’s only a pied a terre; he’s hardly ever there, I gather.’

  ‘Can you see him; ask if we can have another look round?’ ‘Sure. Do we tell him why?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. He’s matey with Farrell, isn’t he?’ Gaffney laughed, remembering his last interview with Lavery. ‘I’m not too sure about that. I think Farrell thinks he’s matey with the Home Secretary.’ He glanced at the clock and sighed. ‘I’ll start with the Home Office. It’s never easy to track him down.’


  They were lucky. Dudley Lavery was at the Home Office and had given permission for the police to have another look round his house without even enquiring why they wished to do so. Tommy Fox had summoned his car and driver and, pausing only to collect the keys from Charles Stanhope at Queen Anne’s Gate, he and Gaffney had driven straight to Cutler’s Mews.

  ‘Where shall we start?’ asked Fox. They had decided not to involve drug-detecting dogs in their search of the Home Secretary’s house. As Fox had put it: ‘That would be too much to expect them to keep under their helmets; you know what coppers are like for gossiping.’

  ‘If it’s here,’ said Gaffney. ‘And if it was, it strikes me as being a bloody good motive for murdering Elizabeth Lavery. Worth a few bob on the open market, a kilo of cocaine.’

  Fox nodded. ‘That had crossed my mind, I must admit. But we’d better make sure it’s not here before we go off on that particular tangent.’

  ‘What does anyone do when they come home from holiday? They unpack their suitcases and put them away wherever they keep them, I suppose.’

  ‘Mine go in the loft,’ said Fox. ‘But I can only afford one holiday a year. These people are probably rushing off every five minutes.’ He paused. ‘Well, we know she was.’

  Gaffney smiled. ‘I’ve just thought of something quite irrelevant. D’you remember Masters saying that he met Liz Lavery on the beach at Le Trayas … ?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that she was staying with Earl Barclay — who incidentally is not an hereditary earl — he’s an American banker or financier, or some such thing?’

  Fox nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I just wondered if Lavcry was there when Liz was having it off with Masters down the road.’

  Fox chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her, not from what we know of the lady. And I certainly wouldn’t put it past Masters. Incidentally, do we know how long she’d been back from Spain before she was topped?’

  ‘Yes.’ Gaffney flipped open his pocket-book. ‘Lavery’s secretary gave me the dates, or some of them … ’ He glanced down at the list. ‘Five days before she was murdered.’

  ‘That means that Masters must have virtually followed her back, probably the day after, to collect his cut from Farrell.’ He nodded to himself. ‘It’s beginning to come together. Farrell denies having had it; Masters swears that he must have done, because he sent it. I reckon they came to the same conclusion, but separately, that Elizabeth Lavery had still got it.’ He drove his right fist into the palm of his left hand. ‘And one of those two bastards — or one of their employees — killed her for it. That almost takes us back to the theory of the disturbed burglar.’

  Gaffney nodded slowly. ‘He could have come here — probably wouldn’t even have thought about breaking in — and tried to persuade her to part with it. She refused — or didn’t know what he was talking about, which he didn’t believe — and chop!’ He drew a finger across his throat. ‘It doesn’t take much to work out that Dudley Lavery’s not at home; only got to hang around the House of Commons, sec him in, and you know you’re safe.’ He spun his paper-knife in the centre of his blotter. ‘Anyway, we know that Masters has got a sophisticated line in surveillance, don’t we, from what you were saying about when he screwed Farrell’s house?’

  Fox nodded. ‘But why resist?’ he asked. ‘It wasn’t hers, and she like as not didn’t even know what it was.’ He paused

  thoughtfully.‘Or she did know, and got all arsy about parting with it.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, not now anyway,’ said Gaffney. ‘Whether it was Masters or Farrell, they would have had to kill her: she knew them both.’

  ‘True,’ said Fox, ‘but my money’s on Farrell. She knew that Masters was a villain, and seemed not to care. She’d met him at the Bailey; knew her old man had defended him. Anyway, from what Waldo Conway told you and Tipper, she’d have been under no illusions about him after one of his little parties in Seville. No, John Gaffney, my old gentleman-detective, I reckon it’s down to Farrell.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘Come home, Bemie Farrell, uncle wants to talk to you.’

  ‘There’s only one problem,’ said Gaffney. ‘Proof!’

  ‘Trust you to throw a spanner in the works … to wreck a beautiful dream … ’

  ‘And apart from anything else,’ continued Gaffney, ‘if the cocaine’s still here, it’ll blow the whole lovely theory out of the water.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Fox, ‘but it does mean that we’ll have to think again.’

  They started with the suitcases which were stacked neatly in a cupboard in a spare room. The third case they opened, which had a small yellow sticker on the outside, revealed a packet of white powder, probably about a kilo in weight.

  ‘Bloody terrific,’ said Fox, throwing himself down into Gaffney’s armchair. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Firstly,’ said Gaffney, sitting down at his desk, ‘I fill in this form and get the damned stuff across to the lab. We’d look a bit silly if it wasn’t cocaine.’

  ‘I know bloody cocaine when I see it,’ said Fox moodily. ‘I suppose we’ll have to hand this over to the Drugs Squad now.’

  ‘No! Not yet.’ Gaffney shook his head. ‘The Commissioner wants Liz Lavcry’s murderer before anything else. We go ahead and do whatever needs to be done to effect an arrest. I’m to keep the Drugs Squad apprised, and they

  can have what’s left. The Commissioner’s words, not mine.’ He grinned and put his pen back in his pocket.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ asked Fox. ‘Well, I say “we”; perhaps I’m rowed out.’ He yawned. ‘I suppose I am really.’

  ‘Oh no you’re not. I need your expertise. The plan is this: as your Colin Masters is so keen to turn Queen’s Evidence, he’s going to have to work for it. Supposing we arrange a meet between the two, having first got Masters to ring Farrell

  -monitored, of course — and tell him that he’s got the cocaine, and does Farrell want it or not? Along will come Farrell, and into our waiting arms … we hope. How’s that grab you?’

  Slowly a beatific smile spread across Tommy Fox’s face. ‘Oh, my dear boy, I do like that. I like that very much. Have you ever thought of making the police force a career?’

  Detective Inspector Henry Findlater walked into the foyer of the hotel looking exactly as if he belonged. He wore a navy-blue Crombie overcoat, open to reveal a dark grey suit with an albert across the waistcoat. His horn-rimmed spectacles clung to the end of his nose, and tucked beneath his arm was an untidily folded copy of the Daily Telegraph.

  The linkman had touched his hat and murmured a respectful greeting as Findlater had entered, and now, as he stood staring absently around the foyer, the hall porter nodded in his direction, convinced that he had recognised a valued guest.

  Findlater was not, of course, the absent-minded businessman that the staff appeared to have mistaken him for; Findlater was checking to see that his officers were in place. He had been entrusted to let Fox know when Farrell appeared and made his way to the lift. He already knew that Farrell had taken the bait, following Masters’ reluctant telephone call, and was now on his way to the hotel that Masters had nominated. There was little doubt — and no great concern

  -that Farrell would arrive at the appointed hour. What was concerning Fox and Gaffney more — and therefore Findlater-was that he might arrive with a number of henchmen, tooled-up. The last thing that the police wanted was a shoot-out in

  a good-class West End hotel. As Fox had succinctly put it at the briefing: it does tend to bugger up the decor.

  Tommy Fox was a shrewd detective — he would not have been in command of the Flying Squad otherwise — and he had arranged for a number of his officers to be armed and strategically placed, just in case. Fox and Gaffney themselves were in a room next to the one occupied by Masters, so that they could listen to the bugging devices which had been so carefully installed; and of course to allay the suspicion that would be aroused were Farrell to spot the two officers, both o
f whom he knew by sight.

  ‘On his way up in the lift now.’ Findlater’s voice crackled through the radio and Fox smiled. They had deliberately chosen a room on the sixth floor to allow themselves adequate notice of Farrell’s arrival, and so that the officer who was in Masters’ room could warn him and have time to leave before Farrell walked into the trap.

  The communicating door opened to admit a detective sergeant who immediately closed it behind him. ‘All set, guv,’ he said to Fox.

  ‘Right.’ He looked round. Apart from the DS who had just appeared, there were three other Flying Squad officers in the room, two of whom would move into the corridor to cover the other door to Masters’ room as soon as the listening devices told them that Farrell had entered. Fox rubbed his hands together and grinned at Gaffney. ‘I do believe we’re going to get lucky,’ he said.

  ‘What the hell are you playing at, Masters?’ Farrell’s voice, clear and easily identifiable, came through the earphones.

  ‘I’m covering my back, that’s what,’ said Masters.

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean? You tell me that you’ve put the bloody woman on a flight to Heathrow from Spain, with the cocaine, and she doesn’t arrive.’

  Masters’ shrug was almost audible through the headsets that Fox and Gaffney were wearing. ‘Is it my fault if the plane gets diverted to Gatwick because of fog? You should tell your hooligans to listen to the travel news. If you paid more, you’d get a better class of hood.’

  ‘He never said anything about a bloody diversion, the bastard,’ said Fox in a whisper.

  ‘Well, where is it?’ Farrell’s voice again.

  ‘Right here, in this room.’

  ‘What took so long?’ There was clear suspicion and mistrust in Farrell’s voice.

  ‘What took so long was you cocking everything up.’ There was malice in that.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that, if you hadn’t been so bloody impatient, you’d have got the stuff without all this hassle.’

  ‘What are you talking about, you bastard?’ Farrell was clearly getting angry.

  ‘I do love it when thieves fall out,’ said Fox in an aside to Gaffney. He was obviously enjoying himself.