Roller Coaster
Page 14
“I got the information from someone I’d done a good turn to. It wasn’t actually confidential – I mean, it wasn’t hedged round with ‘Don’t tell anyone else’ – but in view of the source it came from I was a bit doubtful about passing it on. However, something that happened next changed my mind about that. No, not next, actually. Next but one.”
“Chronological order, please.”
“Good old chronology. Right. The next thing that happened was that I decided to make a search against I.P. This time I thought I’d do it myself. It looked like another of these tight little, bright little, craft. Directors and secretary imported from a firm of City accountants and shares held by their own service company. But one thing I did find interesting. The memorandum of association.”
“Which is, as I understand it, the document that sets out the objects of the company?”
“Correct. And it’s usually a rare old hotch-potch, full of things that a small company couldn’t possibly do. Like laying railways in Texas and running airlines. All put in to camouflage the real intentions of the promoters. This one was surprisingly definite. I’ve copied out the interesting bits. Start at sub-clause (J). Then the next two.”
Petrella read:
‘(J) To pursue all lawful means of reforming the present laws relating to obscenity and obscene publications.
‘(K) To publish, distribute and promote magazines, periodicals and pamphlets in furtherance of this object.
‘(L) To form and organise institutions and clubs with the like objects.’
“As you say,” said Petrella, “all their cards on the table. Nothing illegal about it, of course. Then what?”
“The next thing was, I got a phone call. The man didn’t give his name and had the sort of classless accent you find nowadays in four people out of five in our neck of the woods. He said, ‘I’m told you have recently been researching our little company, Intriguing Publications—’ Pausing there for a moment, I’d heard a rumour that certain crowds in the City did maintain a watch on the Search Room at Companies House. They like to know when stockbrokers or finance houses show an interest in their affairs. I assumed it was one of these people who’d spotted me. I simply said, ‘So what?’ or words to that effect. ‘Well,’ said my caller, ‘it did occur to us to wonder whether you’d like to join one of the clubs we promote. The entrance fee is only one thousand pounds and the annual subscription five hundred pounds, at the moment, that is. We’ve had so many applicants that we may soon be having to put it up, but just now you could get in on the ground floor.’
“’And what do I find on the ground floor?’ I said.
“’As a member of the club you would be entitled to receive, free of charge, two interesting video cassettes every three months.’
“I said, ‘If interesting means what I think it does, then, no, thank you.’
“I was about to ring off when he said, ‘I’m sorry you are declining our offer. So be it. But let me give you a word of advice. You will not pass on any part of this conversation to anyone else. If you feel tempted to do so, have a word with one of Bill Thresher’s partners first.’ Then he rang off.”
“And did the name Thresher mean anything to you?”
“Oh, yes. Thresher & Co are well-known metal dealers. And as it happens I knew one of the junior partners personally, so I rang him up and asked if I could have a word with Bill. He said, ‘Haven’t you heard? It was in the papers only last week. He disturbed some men who were breaking into his flat and got badly beaten up. He’s in the London Central now, in their Intensive Care Unit. The latest reports weren’t too good.’ I said how sorry I was and that my query wasn’t important, and rang off.”
For a long minute Petrella sat in silence, staring at Milo across the desk. He fully realised the importance of what he had heard.
It had lifted a corner of the curtain which hides the square mile of narrow courts and crooked lanes round Lombard Street and the Minories; an area truly Byzantine in its hierarchic, intricate, tortuous ways; an area peopled by well-dressed, well-groomed men who worship one God only, the Mammon of gain; people who are agreeable to talk to and drink with and are dangerous only if their God is threatened, when they can become very dangerous indeed.
It was Milo who broke the silence. He said, “It occurs to me that it may have been stupid of me to come round here. I could easily have been followed. The last thing I want to do is involve you in what might not be your business.”
“It’s my business all right,” said Petrella. “And I’m involved already. Also I guess I know the people who beat up Thresher. A crowd of bullies calling themselves the Farm Boys. They are the strong-arm side of this particular racket. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder whether they aren’t the people who keep the whole thing going. Don’t worry about me. I’ve got plenty of policemen to look after me. It’s you who should be careful.”
“I shall be all right. My firm’s sending me on a six months’ attachment to our subsidiary in Japan. I’m flying there next week and until then I assure you I shan’t go out alone. And I shan’t interfere with anyone who breaks into my flat at night. I shall bolt my bedroom door and scream for the police. I hope what I’ve told you is going to be useful.”
“Extremely useful,” said Petrella. “Next stop the London Central Hospital.”
Here he had a word with the senior consultant, Dr Burden, who said, “It’s not going to be possible for anyone to talk to Thresher, not for some time anyway.”
“I don’t want to press you,” said Petrella. “But it’s desperately important to get one fact – possibly a single name – out of him. How long, do you think?”
“Days certainly. Weeks possibly. Maybe never.”
“As bad as that, is it?”
“His skull was cracked in two places. A neighbour, coming home late, saw the intruders leaving. He didn’t try to stop them, wisely enough, but he managed to get into Thresher’s house, through the window they had broken. He found Thresher and rang the hospital before he rang the police. He was a doctor himself and he knew that in a case of cranial injury minutes can be important. If he hadn’t done that, Thresher might have died. And if no one had found him until next morning, it’s pretty certain he would have been dead.”
“Which might have been the object of the exercise,” said Petrella thoughtfully. “I’ll leave this card with you. It’s got my office and my home numbers on it. Would you please ring me as soon as Thresher can say anything at all?”
The doctor, impressed by the urgency in Petrella’s voice, promised to do that. Petrella went home.
Chapter Twelve
If Petrella had expected that Murdo Wintringham would be a second Poston-Pirrie, he could hardly have been wider of the mark. He remembered seeing him, once before, on television when he was doing a stand-in report for the BBC. On that occasion he had been speaking from somewhere in Manchuria. Since he had been enveloped in a fur hat with side flaps and had spent most of the time with his back to the camera, this was the first chance Petrella had had of getting a clear view of him.
He saw a face that was a map of planes and rugged contours. The left side was seamed and scarred, as though it had been sand-papered by an inefficient carpenter. The result of fire or frost-bite? It was a surprise when he spoke. His voice was soft, even conversational, yet seemed in some way more formidable than the Poston-Pirrie bark.
Petrella said, “Your editor tells me that you’ve been spending much of your time abroad. Europe, he said, and the Far East.”
“Recently Phnom Penh.”
“Which is in Cambodia?”
“It is. But out there it’s a penal offence to call it that. It is now the Khmer Republic.”
“My geography is sadly dated. I still find myself referring to the Persian Gulf.”
Wintringham passed that one up. He said, “You know, of course, why I’ve been called in?”
“I gather that it’s to satisfy your editor about the fate of your predecessor.”
“Tumbled in, certainly.”
“And almost the last thing I saw in Cambodia was a man being knocked on the head and slung into the Mekong River. People were trying to pull him out. I wanted to get close enough to take an action photograph. Unfortunately, the whole thing happened on the far bank and since that was held by the anti-Prince Noradam faction it would have been injudicious to cross over. Their soldiers tended to shoot first and talk about it afterwards. It was soldiers who were doing the pulling out. But he’d been knocked in by a policeman.”
As he added the last few words he jerked his chair forward and the comment came across like a sharp smash at the end of a leisurely rally.
Speaking slowly, to recover his balance, Petrella said, “If you weren’t close enough to get a picture, how do you know it was a policeman who hit him?”
“Oh, in that part of the world you can always tell. The soldiers slope about in any old outfit. The police are always dressed in neat uniform and move smartly. It’s part of their mystique. I think that before we go much further I shall have to ask you to switch off that instrument. Otherwise we shall have to continue our conversation in the back of my car.”
Petrella grinned, switched off the box that was standing unobtrusively among a pile of dockets, put it away in the desk cupboard and shut the door.
“All right now?”
“Much better. One likes to keep these things informal as far as possible. I was scouting round at the weekend, getting my bearings. I talked to a number of people. Weekends are useful. You find people at home. One man I talked to”—(a quick glance down at the notebook on his lap)—“was Desmond Cracknell. Previously a policeman, but not now. So, ready to talk.”
“As coroner’s officer he’s in an official position.”
“He didn’t allow it to inhibit him, not entirely.” Wintringham’s teeth showed for a moment in the start of a smile, quickly suppressed.
I wonder how much you paid him, thought Petrella.
“He said one thing which interested me a lot. It seems that when you and Dr Summerson were discussing this matter with the top man from the River Police – can’t remember his name—”
“Superintendent Groener.”
“That’s the one. He suggested that Pirrie’s body would still have been high in the water when it was caught by the wash of a barge and deposited in the entrance to that dock—”
“As I told your editor when he phoned me.”
“The words you used – that conversation incidentally was recorded – were, ‘It looks as though Mr Pirrie went into the river some way above the dock.’”
“Well?”
“’Some way’. That was a bit vague, wasn’t it? Might have been any old distance. A mile or more. But that wasn’t what Groener said. His estimate was anything between fifty yards and a quarter of a mile. And after looking at the map you settled on Cannon Wharf.”
“Nothing was settled. It was just one possibility.”
“I’m sure it was more than just a possibility, Superintendent. Why, only last Friday you walked down Butcher Row with your number two”—another quick glance at his book—“Inspector Gwilliam. To inspect the wharf, I imagine. I can’t think you’d have done that unless you were fairly certain that it was the spot.”
And how on earth did you know that? thought Petrella. Surely Gwilliam hasn’t been talking.
“And it wasn’t Gwilliam who told me that,” said Wintringham, answering the unasked question. “The fact is, you’re already so well-known round here that you can’t expect to go anywhere without being spotted.”
“All right. Yes. I had a look at Cannon Wharf. And other places as well.”
“No doubt. But that’s a very important area, isn’t it? Pirrie was there on the last night he was known to be alive.”
“It was the last night that anyone has admitted seeing him. We’ve traced him as far as the Athletic Club, in the Commercial Road. He got there around seven o’clock and left some time after eight.”
“And walked back, no doubt, the way he had come.”
“No evidence of that. Having come so far he might just as well have gone on. He could have picked up a train at Stepney Station.”
“But if he did go back, he’d have been walking slap into the middle of the HC area.”
Petrella said, speaking slowly to control his anger, “Yes. He’d come back through what you call the HC area.”
Wintringham had a street map out now. He seemed to find it intriguing. He said, “The map certainly supports my description. The HC headquarters station is in Harford Street. Grindall Mansions, where a lot of them shack up, and the pub they use are both in White Horse Road.”
“Yes. Those facts are correct. What I can’t see is what you are trying to make them mean.”
“Then let me add one more fact. That Pirrie had been in that pub earlier in the evening and had had some sort of row with a gang of HC detectives.”
“And is that something you also picked up from your local informers?”
“It came from the landlord of the White Horse. He might have told me more, but seemed curiously unwilling to open up.”
“Perhaps you didn’t offer him enough money.”
It was now a question of which of two normally self-controlled men was going to lose his temper first. An unbiased observer might have put his money on Petrella, but there was very little in it.
Wintringham drew a deep breath and said, “Money didn’t come into it. He was thinking of his own skin. Not only did he deny having heard what was said, but he couldn’t, apparently, put names to the men who were there. Which was odd since his back bar was practically a police club room.”
“Odd, but possibly true.”
“He even denied knowing Sergeant Stark by sight. Really, Superintendent. That was a bit hard to swallow. He’s a very well-known local character. As well-known as you are.”
“It appears to me that you’re in for a busy time.”
“How so?”
“In as far as I can understand what you’re getting at, you seem to be trying to trace anyone who may have spoken to Pirrie on that particular evening, or, of course, for a day or two afterwards.”
“Afterwards?”
“Dr Summerson’s report, which you’ll hear at the inquest – if you’re not too busy muck-raking to attend – says that Pirrie had been dead for ‘about twelve days’. So there’s nothing to show that that was the last evening of his life. You’ll have to extend your enquiries considerably, both in time and in place, won’t you?”
“For the moment I’m concentrating on the most likely area and the most likely time.”
“You’re not. You’re just playing a guessing game.”
A flush of annoyance was clear, along the top of Wintringham’s prominent cheek bones. He said, “I shouldn’t be forced to guess so much if you could see your way to helping me a little more. Do I take it that you have made up your mind to prevent me finding out who was in that back room and what they talked about?”
“You can take it that I’m not going to help you set up some kangaroo court to consider a theory that you’ve absolutely no evidence to support.”
“Then since you’re determined to be unhelpful, I shall have to go elsewhere.”
“Feel free. Would you like to go up or down? Up to Chief Superintendent Liversedge, at Area, or down to the man who runs HC under me, Chief Inspector Ramsbottom. Some people might object to having their subordinates questioned behind their back, but in this case I’ve no objection at all.”
The thought of what Ramsbottom would say had almost restored his good humour.
“I think I shall have to go a little higher than Area.”
“Then the Deputy Commissioner at Central would be the next man for y
ou to see. I’m sure he’d be prepared to talk to you. He was once a barrister himself and is well able to judge the weight of evidence. Or the lack of it.”
“There are authorities senior even to a Deputy Commissioner.”
“Of course, of course. There’s the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister. And even the Queen. Try them all. Why not? And now, if you don’t mind—”
He got up. Wintringham rose more slowly. Petrella wondered what his Parthian shot was going to be. When he was at the door he simply said, “I’d rather have you with me than against me.” And departed, shutting the door quietly behind him.
At home that evening Petrella recounted as much as he could remember of these exchanges to his wife. She darned and seemed to be listening. He said, “To be honest, I don’t think I came out of it as well as he did.”
She said, “Isn’t that just like a man? To add it all up and see who scored most points. As if it was some sort of game.”
“No, I don’t think it was a game.”
“Surely, all you had to say was, that you couldn’t authorise any cross-examination of your men until he produced something that looked like a case.”
“If he really does go off to our political masters,” said Petrella, “and things get tough, I can see I shall have to brief you to represent me. You’ve got a much more logical mind than I have.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lee Morrissey – her given name, Leah, was used so seldom that she had almost forgotten she owned it – speared a third cream cake and looked thoughtfully across the table at Detective Constable Peregrine Hoyland.
They were in the Cadena Café in Putney High Street. Perry had extracted a grudging afternoon’s leave from Inspector Ambrose (‘see that you’re back by half past six, sharp.’) The tea party was the culmination of a number of earlier and unsuccessful manoeuvres and he had been equally delighted and surprised when a telephone call to her house had found Lee at home and willing to come out and eat cakes at his expense.
Although his kind colleagues would have been the first to suggest it, he was not motivated by the hope of gaining some favour or advantage from Lee’s formidable and devious father. It was simpler than that. With her snub nose and urchin face, Lee had reminded him of a boy he had been in love with at school. It was a case of transferred affection.