Roller Coaster

by Michael Gilbert

  She was half Maurice’s height, heavily built rather than stout. Her face was not attractive, a lot of pig with a little bit of monkey behind it. She was carrying a number of stout manila envelopes and the way that she handled them when she put them down on the desk suggested that there was an object of some weight in each.

  Maurice said, “We have a customer, Mamma.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were busy.”

  As she spoke she was scooping up the envelopes and by the time Petrella had moved back into the shop they had been whisked off the top of the desk and the woman was retreating into the office.

  Petrella said, “I couldn’t help catching a glimpse of your very businesslike inner room. I hope you’ll excuse the comment that it is a surprising contrast to the artistic jumble of your front room.”

  Maurice did not seem to be upset. He said, “The difference you have observed, sir, is the difference between my wife and myself. I am an old-fashioned bibliophile. She is a modern business woman.”

  “Then you make an ideal combination,” said Petrella politely. “How much are you asking for this one?”

  “The David James biography of Lord Roberts? Only a secondary work, I fear. You may have it for three pounds. But if you are really interested in the life of that great soldier, I have the two-volume edition of his autobiography, Forty-one Years in India. A seminal publication.”

  Petrella said he thought the smaller book would do to start with, paid out the money and escaped. He had already marked down a café at the corner where Cecil Court ran out into St Martin’s Lane and here he installed himself to drink coffee and keep an eye on the frontage of the Naughty Nineties. One of its advantages, from his point of view, was that it could hardly have a back door.

  He was thinking about those telephones. Normally, if there were two telephones on a desk, one of them would be an outside line and the other an office intercom. Hardly so in an establishment where the only two rooms were within shouting distance of each other. Could the second one be a private line? Was it possible to have such a thing in London? He would ask his friends in British Telecom, but he thought not. Then a possible explanation occurred to him.

  It would be possible to have two telephones with different phone numbers. The first would be the public one that was in the book. Normal customers would use it. The other would be ex-directory and known only to an inner circle of customers or friends.

  He looked at his watch. He had been sitting there for nearly an hour. During this period two or three people had stopped to inspect the books in the rack, but after a quick glance at their titles had put them back. No one had entered the shop. Then Mamma Meinhold appeared. She was carrying a bulging briefcase which contained, he was sure, those stout manila envelopes. She turned to the left, which meant that she was probably making for the Trafalgar Square post office.

  Petrella paid his bill and walked off in the opposite direction. He thought that he had bought a lot of information for three pounds.

  His first stop was the library in Charing Cross Road. Here, in the London Telephone Directory, he found the name he needed. Winchip P.L. The address was 6-Z Montague Street, WC1. Montague Street, he remembered, ran along the east side of the British Museum and was thus within easy walking distance. The midday heat made him glad of this.

  All the old houses in Montague Street had been pulled down and replaced by six large modern buildings, divided into apartments for the staff and students of London University. Number six was at the far end and T-Y were apartments on the first three floors. Z stood in splendid isolation on the fourth floor. A neat card in the slot said, ‘Lt-Colonel Peter Winchip’.

  The colonel was a distant relative of his mother, a cousin infinitely removed, who kept in touch with her by means of an annual Christmas card. Petrella knew only two things about him. The first was that he was an acknowledged expert on Indian manuscripts and illustrated missals, on which he was standing adviser to the British Museum. This had, no doubt, secured him his privileged apartment. The second fact was that he was over ninety. Since there was a notice in the hallway announcing that the lift was temporarily out of order, he wondered how he left or returned to his eyrie.

  The old man greeted him cheerfully, searching his memory to think who he was. Having finally placed him, he said, “You must be Mirabel Trentham-Foster’s son. The one who became a policeman.”

  “Ten out of ten.”

  “And you want some help from me? Splendid. It will give me something to do. I dislike inactivity. Until they mend that lift I’m confined to barracks. Fortunately there’s a friendly student – he comes from Nairobi – two floors down. He fetches my provisions. Otherwise I should have been reduced to a diet of Bath Oliver biscuits and sardines. Good for my figure, no doubt.”

  He was very ready to discuss the subjects which were interesting Petrella.

  “Meinhold? Meinhold? Wait a moment. Yes. Sandeman, Meinhold. It was one of the leading Calcutta bookshops. Not perhaps the very biggest, but prosperous enough in the period before the Second World War. I wasn’t much in Calcutta myself. Spent most of my time up on the frontier. That was in the twenties, when we were having trouble with the Afridis. But I went down there once or twice on leave. My uncle was stationed there. In the ICS. The boys with brains. Allegedly. Yes. Well, I did get the impression – towards 1939 that would have been – that the shop was finding it difficult to make both ends meet. Usual story. Sandeman was the man with the money. He’d retired and taken his money with him. Am I boring you?”

  “Not in the least,” said Petrella. “It’s just getting interesting.”

  “Well, if there was a fall-off it must have been partially reversed in 1939 by sales of military handbooks and aircraft manuals. But the end of the war finished all that sort of thing and the downhill run continued. By this time a grandson of the original Meinhold was in charge. Can’t remember his name—”

  “Maurice?”

  “That’s right. Maurice Meinhold. The race riots finally finished the shop off and some time in the late sixties poor little Maurice finally had to get out.”

  “If it’s the same Maurice we’re thinking about, he’s certainly not little now.”

  “I was speaking figuratively. Anyway, I gather he came back to this country with a packing-case full of unsaleable Indian books and a lot of debts. Are you telling me that he’s rescued himself and set up here?”

  “Either he’s rescued himself,” said Petrella slowly, “or he’s been rescued. Either way it’s interesting. And I’m much obliged to you.”

  “I’ve enjoyed talking to you, but I’d much rather be doing something. As soon as they get the lift in order. Couldn’t I follow someone?”

  Petrella reflected that Mr Wetherall, well into his eighties, and Colonel Winchip, in his nineties, were both eager to track down desperadoes. It seemed to him to reflect credit on the older generation.

  He said that he’d bear the colonel’s offer in mind and departed. He had in his pocket a leaflet which he had picked up at the Naughty Nineties. It contained at least one piece of valuable information: that the shop was owned by a company, Maurice Meinhold Limited. The track he was following now led into the City. He was going to need help and he thought he knew where he could get it.

  When he was in Q Division one of his more unusual assistants had been Detective Sergeant Milo Roughead, late of Eton College and the ranks of the Metropolitan Constabulary. His family had tolerated the thought of Milo being a policeman for two or three years, but had then extracted him, almost by force, and installed him in the family stockbroking firm. He had not welcomed the move, maintaining that the East End of London was a more salubrious place than the square mile round the Bank of England. He was now a junior partner in the firm.

  When Petrella reached him, through the protective screen of telephonist and secretary, he at once invited him to lunch. Petrella hesitated. He thought of the mound of dockets in his in-tray. Also he knew that he was already spen
ding too much of his time on something which should have been entrusted – if indeed it fell within his manor at all – to a junior officer. He ignored the promptings of his conscience and accepted the invitation.

  “Good show,” said Milo. “Lovely. One o’clock tomorrow at the Gresham Club. It’s a little place in Abchurch Lane, on the left as you come up from Cannon Street. It might help if you could give me a rough idea of what it is you’re looking for. Just the general field. Then I could do some preliminary research. Save your time.”

  “All I can tell you at the moment is that I’m interested in a small outfit called Maurice Meinhold Limited. Anything you can find out about them might be useful.”

  On the following day the lunch provided by the Gresham Club explained to Petrella why, each time that he met Milo, he looked less like a trim and efficient member of the police force and more like an over-fed business tycoon. It did not worry him. He knew that there was a genuine person underneath the striped suit, starched collar and Old Etonian tie.

  When lunch had been disposed of, Milo said, “I got one of our boys to make a search at Companies House. All limited companies have to file their accounts and a certain amount of information about themselves. In this case they seem to have got away with a bare minimum. You know, of course, that they own a bookshop?”

  “I’ve been there. It didn’t look very prosperous. Very few customers and an uninteresting stock. Mostly out-of-date books about India. The more modern stuff is mostly very soft porn.”

  “Well, that’s just what the accounts look like. A few books bought, a few sold. Some years a modest profit, other years a small loss. And it seems to have been trundling along in this highly uninteresting way for nearly twenty years.”

  “Suppose,” said Petrella, who was thinking about that back room, “that there was a secondary and highly profitable business carried out under cover of the bookshop, surely there’d have to be some trace of it in the accounts? They’d have to be audited accounts.”

  “Certainly.”

  “And the auditors would expect to see bank accounts and records of that sort, wouldn’t they?”

  “It would be difficult, but not impossible, for a secondary business to be carried on without leaving any trace in the accounts. But only if all the transactions were in cash. Have you any reason to suppose that this secondary business exists?”

  “No real proof,” said Petrella regretfully. “Mainly instinct. There seemed to me to be a sort of smell about the whole set-up.”

  “Then I can tell you one curious thing. When the company started, it borrowed twenty thousand pounds from a firm called Mansion House Nominees. It must have been a friendly arrangement, because I can’t figure out what security can have been given by the company. Their premises in Cecil Court are leasehold. Not a ground rent, a full rent. That’s clear from the profit and loss account. And you say their stock is nothing to write home about. So what equity was there? What did it mortgage?”

  “Yes. That certainly sounds odd.”

  “And here’s another thing. Mansion House Nominees seem to have waived interest on the loan. What do you make of that?”

  Petrella thought about it while he finished his cup of black coffee. Around him rose the chatter of businessmen talking to businessmen. It sounded like a beehive in June. A contented buzz, as the bees set about manufacturing and storing honey. He said, “You mentioned other information the company had to file. I suppose it tells you about the directors and shareholders and the capital of the company.”

  “Certainly. The directors are Maurice and Maria Meinhold. Maria is secretary. The registered office is at Number 8 Cecil Court. The capital is one hundred shares of one pound each, two of which are held by the Meinholds. The other ninety-eight – surprise, surprise – by Mansion House Nominees.”

  “So who are they nominees for?”

  “You are asking what is sometimes referred to as the sixty-four thousand dollar question.”

  “Is there any way of finding out?”

  Milo did not answer immediately. Then he said, “You’ve got to remember that you’re dealing with the City. I know we’ve had a bad press lately. The one per cent of villains have grabbed the headlines. But the other ninety-nine per cent are perfectly straightforward businessmen. People who keep their promises, even if it hurts their pockets.”

  “He that sweareth unto his neighbour and disappointeth him not, though it were to his own hindrance.”

  “That’s the sort of thing. Did you realise that in this electronic age the Stock Exchange still accepts verbal orders – over the telephone – maybe affecting hundreds of thousands of pounds?”

  “I didn’t, but I’ll take your word for it.”

  “It’s the only way business can be done. And it means that people have to trust one another. Not only to do what they promised, but not to talk about it. That’s why I was hesitating to take on the job you’re suggesting. There are one or two people who owe our firm a favour and might know, or be in a position to find out, who are behind these particular nominees. But if they did tell me, it would be in confidence. I hope you understand what I’m saying, sir.”

  By adding that ‘sir’, Milo had reverted, disarmingly, to a junior policeman addressing his boss. Petrella said, “I understand you perfectly. But if you happened, by chance, to be able to ferret out this information without involving yourself in a breach of confidence, I take it you’d let me know.”

  “Of course. Right away.”

  Milo seemed to have recovered his normal spirits. He ordered two large glasses of the club port.

  Since their return from North Africa, Petrella had fallen into the habit of discussing the day’s doings each evening with his wife. She was almost as knowledgeable about the by-ways of police politics as he was and her assessments were shrewd and trenchant. When he had finished describing, at some length, his visit to the bookshop and his discussions with Colonel Winchip and Milo, she was silent for so long that he thought that either he had bored her, or that she disapproved of what he was doing. Both guesses were wide of the mark.

  In the end her comment surprised him. She said, “So how does Liversedge fit into what you’ve been doing?”

  “Nowhere – as yet.”

  “That’s what I was wondering about. Is he your direct superior, or is he on the sideline? Organisationally, I mean.”

  “He is unquestionably my superior officer. He’s in charge of No. 2 Area and H District is part of his command.”

  “That’s what I thought. So if, for instance, you wanted any help or support you’d have to apply to him.”

  “Correct.”

  “Would he give it?”

  “He would pass the request up, in triplicate, through the correct channels, to Deputy Commissioner Lovell at the Yard.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t seem happy about it.”

  “I’m not unhappy, but there’s a sort of Civil Service feeling about it. Passed to you. That sort of thing.”

  “I agree. But it happens to be the chain of command. It’s the way requests go up and orders come down. However, luckily, it isn’t the whole picture. When Robert Mark set up the Serious Crime Squads, he deliberately left them a degree of autonomy. They answer to Morrissey and to him alone. He’s now head of the whole bunch – inside London and outside. Twelve squads of twenty picked men. If I needed outside help – particularly if it was help of a somewhat irregular nature – I’d go straight to him.”

  “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “We’ve met on a number of occasions. On most of them I was being insubordinate and he was being rude, so we got on like a house on fire.”

  “I’m glad of that,” said his wife. “Because I’ve got a feeling that you’re going to need all the help you can get.”

  Chapter Nine

  “The heart of this matter is in the City,” said Petrella. “There are big names behind it and a lot of money.”

  Morrissey said, “But the dirty
pictures aren’t shot here.”

  “Until recently they were made in Amsterdam. The arrangement centred on a hotel. Parties of schoolboys went there on what were called educational tours.”

  “Depends what you mean by education, dunnit? All right. Go on. I don’t think it’s funny.”

  “The cassettes come back to England in the pockets of the club members. We managed to have one of them followed.” He explained about Draper and the Naughty Nineties. “I think that end of it’s quite clear. Meinhold’s the middle man. He’s the link between the people who take the pictures and the men who use the cassettes.”

  “Use them? Enjoy them, or sell them?”

  “Oh, sell them. The people behind this are businessmen. It cost them twenty thousand pounds to set up that shop. They’d expect a return on their money and they know who’s likely to appreciate muck of this sort. So they pass the names to the Meinholds who add them to their mailing list.”

  “All sales on a cash basis?”

  “Certainly. In the first instance the money goes to the Meinholds. In cash. They keep an agreed commission. The balance goes to the big boys in the City. In cash. They’d have plenty of bank accounts in which it could disappear.”

  Morrissey thought about it.

  He said, “It’s got a lot going for it. Once someone’s bought a cassette he’d be hooked. He’d have to buy others. If he tried to wriggle out he’d be posted round the City as a paedo-porn nut. Right?”

  “And might receive a visit from the Farm Boys.”

  “There’s still a lot of guesswork in it. You’ve no idea who’s behind it?”

  “Not yet. I may be getting some hard evidence soon.”

  “So what do you want me to do right now?”