The Department of Death

by John Creasey

  He called: “Come straight in,” and backed along the passage.

  The man didn’t come in immediately, but pushed the door open a little with his foot, and said: “Let’s have some light, and show yourself.”

  “I’m Grant—T-N-A-R-G,” Grant said.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” The other came in and closed the door. The only light was from the room above, where Grant had left the door ajar.

  Grant didn’t recognize the new-comer; many of Craigie’s agents were strangers to one another.

  “Faraday,” the other said crisply. He was a man of medium height, compact of body and fair-haired. “Craigie says you’ve run into a packet. What’s to do?”

  “There’s a body upstairs. The quicker it’s out, the better. Where’s your car?”

  “Parked in a side street, two minutes’ walk away. Yours?”

  “Round the corner.” Grant turned and led the way upstairs. “I was knocked out and left here. The man, who possibly killed the Italian at the Ball, was shot through the head with my gun. As he’s from the Portuguese Embassy, the Embassy will raise a hell of a stink when they find out.

  The Yard couldn’t keep this to themselves, so we must. I want to get Casado’s body out, so that we’ve time to look around. There’s a wide margin of difference between a missing man and a corpse.”

  “You don’t say!” Faraday grinned as he stepped into the lighted room. First impressions were right. He was in the pink of condition, had a good if severe-looking face with keen grey eyes, and he moved swiftly and easily. “Know who did this?”

  “Not for certain. I think I know one of them.”

  “Hmm.” Faraday crossed the room and looked at Casado’s body. “They made a job of it. One flaw in your reasoning, old chap. Why kill the man who killed the Italian?”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” Grant said. “Can you lift him?”

  “What’s the matter with a big boy like you—” Faraday stopped, looked piercingly into Grant’s eyes, and let his gaze travel upwards. “Oh, I see, you’ve been bounced. All right, I’ll manage him. Anyone else in the house?”

  “I’ve heard no one.”

  “Let’s hope it stays that way. I saw a bobby hanging around the corner.”

  “Pity. But if you can handle the corpse, I’ll lead the way out by the back.”

  “Lead on,” said Faraday, but didn’t bend down to pick Casado up. “Have you had a look round?”

  “They searched the place before they left, I fancy. Anyhow, we can leave the rest to the police.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Or Craigie,” said Grant impatiently. “Our job’s to get the body out of here. I thought all Craigie’s men got a move on.”

  “My mistake,” said Faraday. He pushed the couch farther away, stooped down and lifted the dead man with surprising ease. “Put a handkerchief over his face, will you—or, better still, a towel. Blood drips, and this is a new suit.”

  Grant went to the bathroom for a towel, returned and spread it over the dead man’s face. By then, Faraday was standing on the landing. They started down the stairs, and began their nerve-racking journey.

  5 / Escape

  Faraday came out of the small bedroom at his flat, which was in a mews near Oxford Street and Regent Street, rubbed his hands together, and said: “Well, we’ve had the luck. All clear, I think.”

  “It looks like it,” said Grant gratefully.

  He sat in a deep arm-chair, head resting lightly on a cushion, covered with a hideous material in blues, reds, and yellows. The furnishing here was ultra-modern, and the colour scheme hideously bright. Everything was streamlined, smooth and shining—except Grant’s chair. He felt worn out, didn’t want to move or think.

  “Drink?” asked Faraday.

  “Not with this head.”

  “Coffee and aspirins?”

  “We ought to get in touch with Craigie.”

  “Leave it until we’ve got our breath back,” Faraday said. “Help yourself to a cigarette.” He pointed to a plastic cigarette-box, as brightly coloured as everything else, and a table-lighter in the form of a jet-plane. “I won’t be a jiff.” He went out quickly; every movement he made was quick and decisive. Grant smoked half a cigarette before he returned, drying himself on a towel of many colours. “Like the décor?”

  “Wonderful!” said Grant.

  “Save your sarcasm for a less worthy cause. Sorry it’s a bit bright; your eyes probably can’t stand it. Coffee won’t be long.” He went to the window and pulled the curtain aside cautiously, then said: “No one about. We’re clear, but I don’t want that corpus here for long.” He bustled out, to return with a coffee-holder of the round-glass type, a jug of milk and a plate of biscuits. “To think all the fun and games are still going on at the Ball round the corner! Heartless, isn’t it? White or black?”

  “White—no sugar.”

  “Black and a dash of milk and lashings of sugar, whether you like it or not. Good for shock. If I were a doctor, I’d say that you ought to go to bed and sleep the clock round. How do you feel?”

  “I’m all right,” said Grant. He sipped the hot, sickly sweet coffee and it warmed him. “We’d better leave the body here until Craigie knows about it.”

  “Oh, yes. This being a service flat and the service coming only when I call for it, there’s no immediate danger. I wonder who’s trying to throw a spanner into the Congress works?”

  Grant didn’t speak.

  “I don’t know a lot about this job,” said Faraday. “Meaning, the particular job as apart from the profession. Been with Craigie long?”

  “No.”

  “Your bad luck. Wonderful chap. Know Loftus?”

  “Yes.”

  “Craigie and Loftus together make the nearest thing to a perfect spy machine I’ve ever dreamed of.” Faraday said, sipping his coffee. “I had the usual brief instructions a few days ago, together with tickets and passes and all that for the great occasion. Was all prepared to enjoy it when the knife merchant did his dirty work. Know much about what came afterwards?”

  “No, and it doesn’t matter.”

  “My dear chap! It matters a hell of a lot.” Faraday sat precariously on the tubular-steel arm of a chair. “I should have been inclined to let the police look after our corpus if it weren’t for what happened after the killing. The Tower of Babel was created again. By the time I left, everyone was accusing everyone else.” He grinned. “Slight exaggeration, of course, but the situation resolved itself something like this—one half, the older and calmer half, facing up to the fact that it couldn’t laugh this thing off; most of the others, flabbergasted. A few—five per cent or so—looking daggers at everyone else. The story that an Italian was killed by a Frenchman had gained a pretty strong hold. If I were Craigie, I’d say that the rumour spread so fast that it was done deliberately, and the key to this—get France and Italy hating again. It’s never been easy to get them eating at the same stall, and when this story gets around in Italy and France, there’ll be hell to pay. Am I boring you?”

  “Go on.”

  “Thanks. I don’t think Craigie or Loftus expected anything like this. We were there just to keep our eyes open in case of trouble. Now that it’s come, the evidence—as I say—is that the effort is to set France and Italy at each other’s throats again. The other dead chap—”

  “Portuguese.”

  “Hmm! Complications. I—” Faraday began.

  He stopped abruptly, staring at the door. There was no fireplace, only an electric fire let into the wall opposite the door, and Grant was looking at the fire. He turned his head cautiously. Above the door was a red light—about the size of a pigeon’s egg.

  Faraday whispered: “So I was wrong. Visitors, old chap.”

  The lethargy which had settled upon Grant from the moment he had sat down, vanished completely. He stood up abruptly. Faraday, his face set, watched the red light. Grant moved a little nearer the door.

  Faraday said: �
�Don’t open it,” and went to the window and peered out.

  He appeared to see nothing of interest outside, and let the curtain fall back.

  There was no sound.

  “Smart work, if it’s the police,” Grant said.

  “Smarter if it’s someone else.”

  “Meaning, who?”

  “Pals of Casado or the men who bumped him off. Guns at the ready, and—oh, hallo!”

  The light went out; a green one flashed on.

  “Caller ringing the bell,” said Faraday with relief. “Might be all right, but could be just a trick to make us open the door, all friendly like. Stay here and keep a tight hold on your gun. We might as well turn the place into a morgue, now we’ve started.”

  He went out of the room, leaving the door wide open. Grant watched him cross the small, plainly furnished hall to the front door. He stood on one side, stretched out and opened the door. He kept his free hand in his pocket, where Grant knew he had his gun.

  “Why don’t you people go to bed?” asked Loftus, and his great bulk filled the doorway.

  Faraday closed the door and gave a laugh that wasn’t far removed from a snigger. Loftus, looking vaster than ever with an overcoat over his dress suit, and with his nose red with cold, limped across the hall, nodded to Grant, went to the coffee-holder and sniffed. A pained expression swept over his face.

  “Neat coffee. What’s come over you?”

  “Grant had a crack on his cranium, so we’ve gone all teetotal,” said Faraday. He went to what looked like a cupboard in the wall and pressed a button; the doors opened and a small cocktail cabinet moved forward apparently of its own volition. “Haven’t you had enough to drink tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Whisky?”

  “Please.”

  Whisky gurgled and soda splashed into two glasses on which were printed mask-like faces of beautiful women.

  Faraday said: “See, you’re a bad influence on me. Why am I honoured with a visit from the Boss, Bill?”

  “There was no one at Grant’s flat, so I came here,” said Loftus. “Feel up to talking, Grant?”

  “I can tell you most of it,” Faraday said. “Let him fill in the oddments. The first thing is that Casado was killed and we’ve got the body here. The disappearing trick was Grant’s notion, he thought it essential to keep it away from the police.”

  “Quite right,” said Loftus.

  “And then...”

  The hands of an electric clock which was let into the wall pointed to six o’clock when they had finished talking.

  Loftus, knowing all there was to know, made no attempt to draw conclusions, except the obvious one—that this was a deliberate attempt to cause disunity among the nations of free Europe. He spent little time on that aspect, said that he would arrange for the body to be taken from the flat before daylight, advised Grant to sleep here and told him he was off duty at least until to-morrow afternoon. At a quarter past six, Loftus left the flat.

  At seven o’clock the body was removed in a large wickerwork laundry basket and carried down to a waiting van. By then Grant was sleeping in Faraday’s bed, and Faraday was beginning to yawn widely.

  By then, also, the report of the police, who had now visited 39 Mayberry Avenue, was being studied, both by Scotland Yard officials and by Gordon Craigie in his office off Whitehall.

  And by then Loftus was approaching the office.

  There was some traffic in Whitehall when Loftus reached there. The street lamps were fully on, huge red buses lumbered along, a few cyclists, blue-nosed and blue-cheeked, pushed laboriously against a stiff wind. The pale, imposing edifices of the Ministry buildings looked empty. Big Ben, just out of sight, chimed seven o’clock as Loftus climbed out of his car in a narrow turning off Whitehall, not far from Downing Street. Beyond this Ministry building, nearer the river, were the two buildings of New Scotland Yard. Loftus smiled faintly when he saw a Superintendent of the C.I.D. coming out of a small doorway. The Superintendent was a big man with a straggly moustache, ruddy cheeks, and an aggrieved expression. His name was Miller, but that was not the sole reason why he was known as Dusty. His complexion, even his hair and moustache, gave the impression that they had been dusted with flour only a few minutes before.

  “Why, hallo!” said Loftus “What’s got you up so early?”

  “Why don’t you ever go to bed?” growled Miller.

  “My dear chap! I spend most of my time in bed.”

  “If you’d said asleep, I wouldn’t have argued,” said Miller. “You must have suspected that this was going to happen—why didn’t you warn us?”

  “You give us too much credit, old chap. It was a nasty smack in the eye all round. Seen any newspapers yet?”

  Miller muttered under his breath and strode off. It was clear that he suspected that Department men had been busy at Mayberry Avenue. As the chief liaison officer between the C.I.D. and Department Z, Miller owed a loyalty to each, but the Yard always pulled the stronger.

  As Miller went off, solid and gloomy, Loftus entered the narrow hallway. The door and the hallway looked unimposing—just a side entrance to one of the Ministries, in this case the Foreign Office. The steps were steep and cemented over; footsteps rang out clearly. There was a single handrail, polished brightly from constant use. Loftus went up to the second landing. A blank wall appeared to face him, but a close observer would have seen vertical lines just showing on the wall.

  Loftus felt beneath the hand-rail and pressed a tiny button set into the wall, one that no one could have touched accidentally. Then he stood facing the wall. After a few seconds the vertical lines widened and a pair of double doors slid open. He stepped across the threshold of Department Z and the doors closed behind him.

  Loftus laughed.

  “What’s funny?” asked Craigie.

  He sat in an arm-chair in front of a blazing coal fire, at one end of a long, narrow room. There were two newspapers on his knees, and a dozen others were strewn about the floor by the chair. As he looked up, his face had a hatchet sharpness—then, aquiline, cold in spite of the firelight which danced on it. He was still in evening dress, and a large-bowled meerschaum pipe drooped from his lips—the shiny bowl actually rested against his shirt front.

  On the wall by the fireside were six other meerschaum-shaped pipes, some of wood, some of ivory, all of them carved and beautifully decorated; each of the bowls was much larger than those of an average pipe.

  Loftus spread his hands out in front of the fire.

  “All the hocus pocus is funny. I can never get used to pressing the bell and the door opening.”

  “The trick hasn’t failed us yet, so we’ll keep it that way,” said Craigie, tossing aside another newspaper. “The reports on last night could hardly be worse.”

  “Surprised?”

  “I suppose not,” said Craigie—his eyes were bright and glassy with tiredness—and stretched out his hand for a cup of tea. “Have one?”

  Loftus shuddered. “No, thanks.” He picked up a newspaper and sat down in another arm-chair.

  It was characteristic of these two men that they read in silence for some time. They had worked together for many years, seldom clashing or irritating each other. The big room was an odd mixture. One end—near the fireplace—looked like a corner of any bachelor’s flat. In that corner was a tall cupboard; the door was ajar, a tie hung down from it, and Loftus could see a jam-jar and a tube of toothpaste, cheek by jowl. Craigie, a meticulously neat man in the affairs of the Department, was incapable of keeping his personal things tidy, and inside the cupboard was a heterogeneous mass of oddments. The two arm-chairs were old and well-worn, like the faded Persian carpet. The fireplace—a fire always burned because Craigie did not like central heating and seldom turned it on—had a homely look. The teapot, cups and saucers on the tray by his side and the small table with some well-thumbed books standing on it, gave the same impression.

  The other end of the room was more like Faraday’s flat.r />
  Here were two large desks and several filing cabinets, all of green metal. On both desks were several telephones, each of a different colour, and there were more telephones on a smaller desk. Against the wall stood the receiving part of a dictaphone, one of the old-fashioned type on a wheeled stand, with black cylinders resting in the rack in front. The lighting there was from a fluorescent strip in the ceiling; at Craigie’s “home” end of the room, it came from the wall- and reading lamps.

  Loftus’s smile faded as he read.

  Every front page carried a huge headline, austerity forgotten. Each story was written with an eye to sensation. The contrast between the glittering splendour of the reception and the grim fact of murder was played on to make a reporter’s holiday. It had all been inevitable; but to see it there in black and white perturbed him as much as it had Craigie. Not one paper—not even The Times—had failed to make use of every detail to speculate and condemn. Two or three actually printed the rumour that a French delegate to the Congress had killed one from Italy. In three there were brief leading articles, all playing the same tune. This “dastardly outrage” would inevitably have repercussions on the friendly understanding that was being reached among the nations of Europe.

  Loftus dropped the Echo.

  “We’ve a really nasty job.”

  “What did Grant do last night?” asked Craigie.

  “In his own words, he botched it. That’s only partly true. He went on his own to follow a Portuguese named Casado—the chap I mentioned—and didn’t get exactly what he expected. Someone else was in the house unknown to him—his mistake was not being on his guard against an attack. Grant was knocked out and an effort was made to frame him for the murder of Casado, whom he found dead. He prevented that and hid the body, which is safe. Two things really worthy of note, apart from the fact that he and Faraday got the body away and I’ve made sure it’s safe. First, there was a gap of at least two hours between the time when he was attacked and the arrival of the police. By the way, who warned the police?”