They were in Marmion’s office in Scotland Yard, comparing what they’d learnt in the course of the day. Keedy was interested to hear about another side to David Ackley’s character. Evidently, he was not the shrinking violet he was reported to be.
‘If Chat hates jokes, he won’t like Hubbard’s latest prank.’
‘Why, what’s he been up to this time, Joe?’
Keedy told him about the visit to Miss Latimer and how Hubbard had called on her earlier, posing as the superintendent. Marmion guffawed. The two of them were still shaking with mirth when Chatfield walked in.
‘I’m glad the both of you can find something to laugh at,’ he said, making them react guiltily. ‘We have a vicious murder to solve and a prisoner who escaped custody by using excessive violence. Then, Inspector, we have the small matter of your son’s disappearance. I fail to see any excuse for amusement in all that.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Marmion.
‘So am I,’ murmured Keedy.
‘May I know what struck you both as so funny?’
‘In hindsight, it wasn’t funny at all, sir.’
Marmion picked up some sheets of paper. ‘My report is ready for you, sir.’
‘Thank you,’ said Chatfield, taking it from him. ‘I’ll read it while the pair of you are doing something useful. I’ve just had a phone call about the murder victim and discovered something that I suspected from the start.’
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘You’ll find out when you meet Donald Breen.’
‘I don’t think I know that name,’ said Marmion.
‘He works for Special Branch.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘Hello, Mrs Fryatt,’ said Ellen.
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m hoping that you may be able to help me.’
‘Why should I do that?’
‘Colin was Paul’s best friend.’
‘I don’t need reminding of that,’ said Barbara Fryatt, resentfully. ‘My son died while yours lived. Why? It’s not fair. What’s so special about Paul Marmion?’
‘Nothing,’ said Ellen, trying to placate her. ‘He was lucky, that’s all.’
‘He always was.’
Folding her arms, Barbara stood there and glowered. She had changed. When her son had been killed in action, she’d been immensely grateful for the consolation that Ellen had offered. Her attitude was different now. It was clear that her visitor would get no further than the doorstep. Ellen had been looking forward to meeting the woman again and expected cooperation. It was not forthcoming. Tall, big-boned and running to fat, Barbara Fryatt exuded anger and bitterness in equal degrees.
‘Why are you bothering me?’ she asked.
‘I’m anxious to track down Colin’s girlfriend, Mavis Tandy.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘I need to speak to her, Mrs Fryatt.’
‘Why?’
‘She may be able to help me. Do you know where she lives?’
‘I might do.’
‘Then I’d be very grateful if you could tell me.’
‘I’ll need to know why first.’
Ellen had been hoping to get the information without having to disclose a reason for needing it but that was clearly impossible. Barbara had the advantage over her. Only the truth would encourage her to help.
‘Paul has disappeared,’ she admitted.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just that – he’s run away and we’re trying to find him.’
‘Why did he do that?’
‘We don’t know, Mrs Fryatt. I wish that we did.’
‘How does Mavis come into this? Paul doesn’t even know her.’
‘Yes, he does – or, at least, he did.’
Ellen explained that Mavis had written to her son, asking him to meet her so that she could hear the details of her former boyfriend’s death on the battlefield. Paul had got in touch with her. Though a friendship seemed to be developing between the two of them, it came to a sudden end. Ellen wanted to know why.
‘So he was trying to steal Colin’s girlfriend, was he?’ challenged the other woman. ‘That’s a terrible thing to do.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘I think it was. It would be typical of Paul.’
‘That’s unkind!’
‘Don’t talk to me about kindness, Mrs Marmion. Your son didn’t know the meaning of the word. He always had to be first in everything and pushed Colin into the shade. He made my son trot after him like a pet dog. I’ll never forgive him for that.’
Ellen had to hold back a biting retort. There was no point in alienating the woman completely or the front door would be shut in her face.
Barbara’s grim face was lit by a smile but there was no kindness in it.
‘So he’s run away from you, has he?’ she said, relishing the news.
‘Paul has been under a lot of strain lately.’
‘You know what it’s like to lose a son now.’
‘It’s … very painful,’ confessed Ellen.
‘What if he doesn’t want to come back?’
‘We’ll respect his decision, Mrs Fryatt. We just need to know where he is and why he left without a word.’
‘And you think he might be with Mavis?’
‘No, no, I’m certain that he isn’t.’
‘Then why bother her?’
‘When he met her, Paul liked her. I could see that. They were both very fond of Colin. That gave them a bond. It’s just that … well,’ said Ellen, face crumpling, ‘he might have confided things to Mavis that will help us to track him down.’
‘Why can’t your husband do that? He’s a detective.’
‘He’s a very busy detective, Mrs Fryatt. That’s why I’ve taken over.’
Barbara regarded her with a sense of pleasure fringed with sympathy. Glad that Ellen was patently suffering, she could nonetheless see a way to alleviate her distress.
‘I don’t have Mavis Tandy’s address,’ she said.
‘Oh, I see.’
‘But I do know that she lived in Gillingham.’
‘Yes, I knew it was somewhere in Kent. Paul was seen getting on to a bus.’
‘Then you should be able to find Mavis.’
‘Why?’
‘Her father’s a vicar there.’
Relations between the Metropolitan Police and Special Branch were never entirely free from friction. Since each of them felt that it had the more important role, there were bound to be occasional clashes. The police force consisted of almost 20,000 officers, supported by a separate force of 1,100 men in the City of London itself. While it was tiny by comparison, Special Branch nevertheless felt that it had a senior role, dealing, as it did, with military intelligence vital to the security of the whole country. Detectives like Marmion and Keedy solved major crimes in London. Special Branch, by contrast, reached out well beyond the capital and into distant territories. Their international scope gave some of its officers inflated ideas about their operational significance. Donald Breen was one of them.
He was a big, beetle-browed, stooping man in his forties with a face that was defiantly motionless. When he gazed in turn at the visitors, Marmion and Keedy felt as if they were being expertly frisked by his eyes. They were in a small, rather stuffy office. Nothing had been left on the desk to give them any idea of what Breen had been working on. In response to a nod, they sat down. Though they had no idea of his rank, he was behaving as if he was superior to both of them.
‘You sent for us,’ said Marmion.
‘It’s good to meet you both at last,’ said Breen, offering no handshake. ‘I’ve followed your careers with interest.’
‘What about your career, sir?’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, it would be helpful to know something about you so that we can make some sort of judgement on our own account. All we know about you is your name.’
‘That’s more than adequate, Inspector.’
‘I don’t have time for pointless digressions.’
‘They wouldn’t be pointless to us.’
‘I’m trying to help you,’ said Breen with mild irritation. ‘Who I am and what I do is irrelevant. You’re obviously in need of assistance. Why not accept it?’
‘The sergeant was making a reasonable point,’ said Marmion.
‘And I’ve given him a reasonable answer.’
‘It was more of a rebuff than an answer.’
‘Not in my opinion.’
His eyes glinted from beneath the beetle brows. The visitors were forced to accept the fact that the conversation had to be on his terms, relegating them, for the most part, to the position of passive listeners.
‘I want to tell you something about David Ackley,’ said Breen.
‘We already know a little,’ said Marmion.
‘Really?’
‘His father came to see us.’
‘That’s news to me.’
‘Whoever compiled the dossier on us needs a rap on the knuckles,’ suggested Keedy. ‘I took Mr Ackley to the morgue to identify the body. That’s how we finally discovered the name of the murder victim.’
‘What else did you discover, Sergeant?’
‘We learnt that Ackley was a Communist sympathiser.’
‘He was rather more than that.’
‘And that his parents had to throw him out.’
‘Yes,’ said Breen, wearily, ‘we have details of his domestic life. David Ackley aroused our interest several years ago. That’s why we’ve been keeping him under the microscope.’
‘Then why didn’t you come forward when he was killed?’ asked Marmion. ‘It would have saved us a huge amount of time and effort. We could have had this conversation days ago.’
‘No, we couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘We were unaware of Ackley’s hiding place.’
‘I thought you had him under the microscope.’
‘We did,’ said Breen, flatly, ‘but he … found a way to elude us.’
Opening a drawer, he took out a packet of cigarettes, slipped one of them between his lips then lit it with the lighter on his desk. Without offering the packet to the others, he put it back in the drawer. He drew on the cigarette then exhaled smoke.
‘David Ackley,’ he began, ‘was enticed into the Communist ranks for a number of reasons, one of them purely personal. He was revolted by everything that his father did and stood for – the phrase he once used of him was that he was “irredeemably bourgeois”. That might sound like a compliment to some people. In Ackley’s eyes, it was a supreme insult. He saw his father as a willing part of a ruthless capitalist system exploiting the working class.’
‘That’s not how we saw him,’ said Marmion. ‘He struck us as a decent man in an awkward situation. And why should the son start siding with the working class when he wasn’t – and never could be – part of it?’
‘He overlooked that problem, Inspector.’
‘When did he come to your notice?’ asked Keedy.
‘It was when he started writing articles for a magazine produced by a group that had various names. An umbrella title would be Friends of a Free Russia but that disguises the fact that they didn’t extend friendship to their own country. Some of their propaganda advocated violence to achieve their ends.’
‘And what were those ends?’
‘Revolution in Russia itself was the first step, to be followed in time by some sort of insurrection here in Britain. It may sound ludicrous to us, but people like Ackley believed this nonsense and wrote in praise of it.’
‘Why didn’t you close the magazine down?’
‘We did just that. It was revived under a different name.’
‘How many members did this organisation have?’
‘At the start,’ replied Breen, ‘it was only a handful, but it steadily grew in strength. After a couple of years, Ackley was the editor of the magazine. All of a sudden, he had some influence.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Marmion, ‘but this doesn’t sound like the man who finished up in my brother’s hostel. According to Raymond, he was desperately shy. Yet he was surrounded by men from the very depths of society. You’d have thought he’d leap up onto a chair and start giving fiery speeches about poverty in the midst of plenty.’
‘He needed to keep out of sight, Inspector.’
‘What was he afraid of?’
‘Us, for a start – and of the man who was sent to kill him.’
‘Sent to kill him?’ echoed Marmion.
‘We believe that it was a targeted assassination.’
‘Who was behind it?’
‘There are a number of possibilities.’
‘Then perhaps you’d be good enough to tell us who they are,’ said Keedy, impatiently. ‘You might also tell us how he managed to shake off your surveillance. It doesn’t say much for the reputation of Special Branch that you managed to lose track of a lone man with a battered briefcase.’
‘Don’t pass judgement till you know all the facts, Sergeant,’ said Breen, stung by the criticism. ‘We have limited resources. It’s impossible to watch all of the people on our list of subversives. That being the case, we put Ackley where he didn’t need to be monitored every hour of the day.’
‘And where was that?’
‘Knockaloe Camp on the Isle of Man.’
‘But that’s reserved for civilian internees like Germans.’
‘We make use of it for our own purposes.’
‘How long was David Ackley there?’
‘It was almost three months. We hoped that we’d put him and his vile propaganda to sleep indefinitely but it was … not the case.’
‘How on earth did he escape?’ asked Marmion. ‘Knockaloe is on an island of barbed wire. Security is very tight, by all accounts.’
‘Ackley got out,’ said Breen, crisply. ‘That’s all I’m prepared to say. I just wanted you to know something about the man whose murder you’re investigating. He was a dangerous man. It was deemed sensible to lock him up.’
‘That’s not all,’ said Keedy.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, if he was that much of a danger, it could have been deemed sensible to have him killed. Is that what happened at the hostel, sir? Did someone from Special Branch finally catch up with him?’
Snatching the cigarette from his lips, Breen stubbed it out in an ashtray. He was seething with fury at Keedy’s question. The interview was over. They’d learnt all they were going to learn. Marmion thanked him for speaking to them and led the way out. Keedy was unrepentant.
‘I’m sorry about that, Harv. I had to speak out.’
‘You were right to do so, Joe,’ said Marmion, smiling. ‘I just don’t think you should ever apply for a transfer to Special Branch.’
Ellen had no difficulty in finding the vicarage in Gillingham. Delighted to catch Mavis Tandy at home, she was pleased when she was invited in. It was an improvement on the treatment she’d received from Barbara Fryatt. On the other hand, Mavis was palpably uneasy about meeting Paul Marmion’s mother and her manner was guarded. She was a tall, plain, rather gawky girl with red hair and freckles. There was a faint resemblance to Sally Redwood. Sitting on the edge of her chair, she kept her hands entwined together.
‘Did Paul send you?’ she asked, nervously.
‘No, that’s not why I’m here.’
‘We’re not friends any more, Mrs Marmion.’
‘I gathered that.’
‘Has he … said anything about me?’
‘Paul said very little, I’m afraid. It’s the reason I know so little about you. For instance, I had no idea how to get in touch with you. I had to ask Colin’s mother how I could find you.’
‘I didn’t get on with Mrs Fryatt,’ said Mavis, sadly. ‘Since Colin and I had been so close, I thought she’d like to meet me from time to time but she didn’t. She said t
hat we had nothing to say to each other.’
‘Mrs Fryatt is finding it hard to cope with what happened.’
‘It’s the same for me. Colin’s death was like a thunderbolt. I was in a daze for weeks. I kept praying that the news was a terrible mistake.’
Mavis went on to talk about her former boyfriend for minutes on end, omitting the fact that their relationship had been an extremely short one. Ellen didn’t interrupt her. The girl had obviously been deeply in love for the first and only time in her life. It was because she was so eager to know every last detail about Fryatt’s death that she’d got in touch with Paul. When she reached that point in the narrative, Mavis hesitated.
‘That’s when I … wrote to Paul.’
‘I understand.’
‘I had to talk to someone who knew Colin, you see. The obvious person was Mrs Fryatt but she was so unfriendly. I don’t know why.’
Ellen could hold back her news no longer. ‘Paul has run away.’
‘Oh, I’m … sorry to hear that.’
‘He left no explanation. He just went.’
Mavis was worried. ‘You didn’t think that he’d come here, did you?’
‘No, I was certain that he hadn’t.’
‘That’s a relief.’
‘The thing is, Mavis … May I call you that?’ The girl nodded. ‘The thing is, Mavis, that you are the only person Paul showed the slightest interest in since he came out of hospital. You sort of … brought him back to life somehow.’
‘It wasn’t what I intended. I just wanted to talk about Colin.’
‘But you did meet up with Paul two or three times. Did he ever talk to you about wanting to leave home?’
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘Did he say that he was unhappy or restless?’
‘I could see that he was both, Mrs Marmion. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind. One minute, he was talking about rejoining his regiment so that he could get revenge for what happened to Colin. The next minute, he was complaining about what the war had done to him and how he hated being in the army.’
‘We had the same problem with him.’
‘Where could he have gone?’
‘We don’t know, Mavis. I’m just trying to find out why he went. Since you got close to Paul for a short while, I was hoping you might know something that we don’t. It’s horrible being so completely in the dark.’
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