Orders from Berlin

by Unknown

  ‘You can rely on me,’ Quaid said enthusiastically, responding immediately to the appeal to his vanity. ‘Between ourselves, I already have a prime suspect – the victim’s son-in-law. He had the motive and the opportunity, and he’s a bad penny if ever I’ve seen one. I don’t see this as being one of our more difficult cases, to be honest with you.’

  Quaid had been on his side from that moment on. His over-zealous young assistant, Detective Trave, had continued to be a nuisance, following Seaforth to his meeting with Ava at the Lyons Corner House, but even that had turned out be a lucky break. Seaforth had rung up Quaid to complain, and it was during that conversation that the inspector had mentioned the cuff link the police had found outside Albert’s flat, the one Seaforth had lost in the struggle. And the information had come just in time for Seaforth to bring its twin over to Battersea today and plant it in Bertram’s desk, ready for Ava to find.

  Trave had tried to follow him today too, but it had been child’s play to give him the slip, and he’d decided not to complain again to Quaid. As far as he was aware, he had done nothing to inspire Trave’s dogged pursuit, and he hoped that lying low would put an end to Trave’s interest in him. Quaid would certainly not want more time wasted on a case that had already been solved.

  All that remained now was to watch the final act of the drama that he’d set in motion. Seaforth looked to his right and saw the dapper, rotund figure of Bertram Brive coming into view. There was a jauntiness in his step that made Seaforth think Bertram had got what he wanted down at the Probate Office. It was strange to watch him strutting up the road, blissfully ignorant of the fate that awaited him, moments away, inside his flat. He stopped in front of his building, took out his key, and opened the door. And two minutes later came back out in handcuffs.

  CHAPTER 10

  Trave sat in the office he shared with Quaid at Scotland Yard and waited for the inspector to return, expecting the worst. Now that it was too late, he bitterly regretted going back to Broadway again. He’d been a fool to think he could track Seaforth without being seen. The man had eyes in the back of his head.

  Trave had been careful this time, remembering the lessons he’d learnt at the police training school and trying not to repeat the mistakes he’d made the day before. From the moment he’d followed Seaforth into the Underground station, he’d kept himself at maximum distance from his target, staying close to other travellers and waiting patiently at the top of each set of escalators and at the turning of every passage until Seaforth had disappeared from view, and only then hurrying forward until he had caught sight of him again. And there had been no sign that Seaforth knew he was being followed. He’d walked at a brisk pace, turning left and right without a backward glance until he’d finally come to a halt halfway down the westbound platform and stood waiting for the train, examining a government information poster on the opposite wall with apparent rapt attention.

  Suddenly there’d been a whistle and a rush of wheels as the train rolled into the station, and Seaforth had got in. He’d looked as if he had no idea he was being followed. Trave had waited until the last moment and then jumped aboard a carriage two away. The air-operated doors had closed and the train moved off, and there on the platform was Seaforth, standing just where he’d been before, watching with a smile as Trave was borne away into the tunnel heading for Victoria.

  Trave had never stood a chance; he realized that now. Seaforth had eyes in the back of his head because he was a spy, just like everyone else who worked in 59 Broadway. There was no other explanation. But Trave knew that the knowledge wasn’t going to do him any good. Seaforth held all the cards. He’d wasted no time complaining to Quaid the day before, so why would he not do the same today? And Trave knew what would happen then – he’d be transferred out of Scotland Yard and he’d never have any more dealings with this case ever again, or any case at all, for that matter, if Quaid had anything to do with it.

  Trave had been pacing the office backwards and forwards like a prisoner in his cell as he reflected on his position, and now he banged his head against the door in frustration. But there was nobody to take any notice, just the clock on the wall ticking away the minutes until Quaid’s return. With a sigh and a sore head, Trave sat down and began to work his way through the backlog of paperwork that had been building up on his desk over the last few days. It had always been the part of his job that he least enjoyed – he hadn’t worked hard to become a detective in order to turn himself into some kind of glorified postal clerk. He wanted to be out in the field pursuing leads, not sitting here immured in some faraway corner of Scotland Yard writing up reports and listing evidence exhibits. But he’d better get used to it, he thought bitterly. He’d be lucky to be doing even that once Quaid had finished with him.

  The inspector arrived back on the stroke of twelve. And he was not alone – he had Bertram Brive in tow, squirming in the grip of a burly uniformed policeman with bright red cheeks and small mean eyes. His name was Twining, and he had a reputation at the Yard for doing whatever Quaid told him to do, no questions asked.

  ‘Book him in, Constable,’ Quaid ordered, speaking to Twining. ‘Make sure he hasn’t got any hypodermic needles hidden up his sleeves.’

  ‘This is an outrage. I want my solicitor—,’ Brive began indignantly.

  ‘What? The same one you used to cook up old Morrison’s will?’ asked Quaid with a grin, cutting him off. ‘Don’t worry – you’ll have your chance to tell us what you’ve been up to in a little while, but Constable Twining here is going to process you first. We need to do everything properly, you know. I’m sure you wouldn’t want it any other way, now, would you, Doctor?

  ‘Soften him up a little too. That never did any harm,’ said Quaid, turning to Trave with a wink once Brive had been dragged away, his protests still dimly audible from the other end of the corridor. ‘A good morning’s work if I say so myself,’ he said expansively, sitting back with a sigh of satisfaction in the expensive swivel chair that he’d had installed behind his desk and stretching out his legs. ‘Case cracked and should be case closed by the end of the afternoon once we’ve got our confession. And then I’ll buy you a drink to celebrate. They keep a good Islay malt whisky for me under the counter at the King’s Head over the road, a nice chaser for a pint of their London ale.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Trave, feeling more than a little disoriented. He’d been expecting summary dismissal from his boss, not an invitation to a party.

  ‘Ava, the victim’s daughter, gave us the break. Full credit to her – the bastard’s been trying to dispatch her too, from what I can gather. She searched her husband’s desk this morning after he’d gone out and found the cuff link that matched the one we recovered from off the landing outside Morrison’s flat.’

  Quaid said nothing about Seaforth’s role in facilitating the search. He knew that Bertram would be less likely to confess if he could claim the evidence had been planted, so it wasn’t information that he intended to disclose to the doctor when he interviewed him. And if Trave didn’t know what had happened, then there would be no risk of him blurting it out to Bertram.

  ‘And the cuff link’s not all we’ve got, either,’ Quaid went on happily. ‘I went through Brive’s desk myself while we were waiting for him to come back, and guess what – he’s being blackmailed.’

  ‘Blackmailed! For what?’

  ‘Sex. That’s what it’s usually about, isn’t it? Turns out he’s homosexual and someone somewhere’s got photographs to prove it. Look, here’s one that the blackmailer sent him with his first demand – standard stuff, but not very pleasant,’ said Quaid, handing Trave a photograph that he’d extracted from one of the evidence bags he’d deposited on his desk when he came in. It was a grainy picture no bigger than a snapshot, but there was no mistaking Brive, naked apart from a sheet pulled hastily across his lower body. He was lying next to a younger man on an unmade bed in what looked like a cheap hotel room somewhere. The shock and terror on Brive’s face
were palpable. The flash photograph had obviously been taken at the moment of discovery.

  ‘He knew he’d be ruined if it came out, and so he’s been paying the blackmailer off for over a year,’ Quaid continued. ‘Borrowing money right, left, and centre to do it, but then recently whoever it is has got a bit more greedy, just like they always do. Result was our doctor friend couldn’t come up with the money, and not just that, he started defaulting on interest payments on the debts he’d already run up. So his creditors started to call in their loans, which must have scared him quite a bit because he’s in hock to some pretty unpleasant people, south London sharks of the worst kind. Anyway, the whole house of cards was just about to come tumbling down when Albert Morrison conveniently broke his neck, since when Brive’s been able to use the promise of his inheritance to stabilize his debts and get the blackmailer off his back. Everything’s here. All the dates match up,’ said Quaid, tapping the evidence bags. ‘All we need now is his confession.’

  ‘And you’re sure it’s him?’ Trave asked. He had to admit that the new evidence sounded compelling, and it made him uncomfortable to realize that he was disappointed by the new developments. He didn’t want Brive to be guilty. He wondered whether his obsession with 59 Broadway and its occupants had warped his view of the case.

  ‘I’m positive he did it – have been from the first time I clapped eyes on the bastard,’ said Quaid expansively. ‘Some people have got a nose for a good wine; I’ve got a nose for guilt. You know me – I rely on my instincts, and they haven’t failed me yet.’

  One thing Trave had to admit about his boss was that he was a skilled interrogator. It wasn’t just instinct that Quaid relied on to get results. He was an expert at pushing his questioning powers to the legal limit. He knew when to press a suspect hard and when to pretend to be his friend, and he was prepared to be patient if necessary, and flexible too. He adapted his tactics as he went along.

  Trave was impatient to find out what Brive had to say, but Quaid insisted on waiting until after lunch to start the interview – enough time for Brive to have been softened up by the extra unpleasantness that Quaid had ordered to accompany the booking-in procedure. The strip search was humiliating; it undermined the suspect’s mental defences. And the wait in the windowless holding cell was calculated to induce panic.

  ‘First things first,’ said Quaid, rubbing his hands together in anticipation while he and Trave waited for Brive to be brought to the interview room. ‘We need to get our doctor friend to waive his right to counsel. That’s vital. We’ll never get anything out of him once he gets his solicitor here.’ Quaid sounded like a professor giving a master class to a specially chosen student.

  ‘This is an outrage. I’m innocent of all charges,’ said Bertram angrily, resuming his protest where he’d left off before as soon as he’d sat down, pushed into the waiting chair by Constable Twining. ‘I want my solicitor.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Quaid.

  ‘Why? Because I’ve got rights. Don’t tell me I haven’t.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of doing so, Doctor,’ said Quaid, sounding like the living embodiment of the voice of reason. ‘I just wanted to know why you feel you need a solicitor. I mean, if you’ve got nothing to hide …’

  ‘I don’t have anything to hide.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. But then I don’t quite follow why you need representation. You’ll be telling us the truth whether you have a solicitor here or not, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ said Bertram. ‘What do you take me for?’

  ‘Well, then, wouldn’t it be simpler for you just to do that and then we can all go home?’ Quaid asked pleasantly. ‘I’m sure you’re a busy man, Doctor, and that you’ve got better things to do than sit around in that cell twiddling your thumbs while we wait for your lawyer to get here. Transport is very bad today after the bombing last night, but I think you already know that. It could take hours.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ Bertram said crossly. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  Quaid showed no sign of excitement at having got what he wanted. He continued asking his questions in the same level, even-handed way that he’d adopted at the start of the interview, and Bertram didn’t seem to know how to respond. It was as if he’d expected rudeness and aggression from Quaid, following on from their encounters in Albert Morrison’s flat on the night of the murder and then in his own earlier that morning, and now didn’t know how to handle this new polite and reasonable version of the inspector.

  Quaid began by summarizing the demands from Bertram’s creditors. He showed Bertram the dates on their letters and demonstrated how the pressure had built in the weeks leading up to Morrison’s death, and then he laid out the blackmail letters one by one on the table and held up the incriminating photograph that he’d shown Trave before the interview began. Bertram flushed and turned away, hiding his eyes with his hand. Trave could sense his growing desperation.

  ‘How old is the young man beside you on the bed?’ asked Quaid.

  ‘I – I don’t know,’ Bertram stammered.

  ‘Fair enough. I’m sure we can find out for ourselves if it should prove necessary,’ said Quaid.

  ‘What do you mean, necessary?’

  ‘Well, the blackmail will be important prosecution evidence if there’s a trial. I’m sure you can understand that. The letters and the photograph explain your state of mind, and if the young man was under age, then that just makes it more likely that you’d resort to desperate measures to keep the blackmailer from going public—’

  ‘But I didn’t resort—’, Bertram began.

  ‘Hear me out, Doctor,’ said Quaid, holding up his hand. ‘There’s another side to the coin. If you plead guilty, then the letters and the photograph don’t need to come out. They could be our secret. If you like, I could even pay a visit to whoever it is who’s been persecuting you for the last twelve months. A few carefully chosen words of warning and that would be an end of the matter. I can be quite persuasive when I want to be. I can assure you of that.’

  ‘But I can’t plead guilty to something I didn’t do,’ said Bertram, squirming in his chair. There was a plaintive note in his voice now, almost a wail.

  ‘But you did do it, Doctor. Look at this cuff link your wife found in your desk this morning. It matches one found on the landing outside your father-in-law’s flat, just near where you pushed him over the balustrade.’

  ‘That’s not mine,’ said Bertram sharply.

  ‘Not yours! Then what’s it doing in your desk?’

  ‘I don’t know, someone must have put it there. I’m being framed,’ Bertram said shrilly. ‘That’s what’s happening here. You’ve got to listen to me – whoever put that cuff link in my desk is the one who killed Albert. You need to find out who’s been in my flat. You need to ask Ava.’

  ‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ said Quaid. ‘It’s your desk, and your wife found the cuff link in the top drawer this morning. I assume you’re not suggesting she put it there?’

  ‘No, of course I’m not—’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Quaid, cutting Bertram off even though he looked like he had more to say. ‘And what about your sudden appearance at the murder scene?’ he continued, piling on the pressure. ‘How do you explain that? No one called for your assistance.’

  ‘I was concerned about my wife …’

  ‘And yet you’d never gone over there to see if she was all right before. The Blitz had been going on for more than a week and she’d been over at least four times to check on her father when there were raids, without any sign of you showing up. Why did you choose that particular night to pay a visit?’ asked Quaid. ‘And why did you run up the stairs and try to interfere with the evidence in your father-in-law’s flat the first chance you got?’ he pressed when Bertram did not answer.

  ‘I was looking for the will,’ Bertram said. ‘I admit that. But I didn’t kill him. I swear it.’

  ‘Okay, so let me see if I’ve
got this right: you needed his money and you got him to change his will to leave it to you, but then you had nothing to do with his death. That singular piece of good fortune just happened to fall into your lap at the very moment when you needed it the most. Is that really what you’re telling us?’ asked Quaid, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

  ‘Yes, you’ve got to believe me—’

  ‘But I don’t,’ said Quaid, cutting Bertram off. ‘I don’t have to believe you. I’m a rational man just like Detective Trave here, and what you say makes no sense, no sense whatsoever.’ Quaid paused, scratching his chin with his forefinger as he maintained his observation of Bertram, who was continuing to squirm about in his chair. The inspector reminded Trave at that moment of some cold-blooded scientist watching the effect of an experiment on some miserable laboratory animal.

  ‘Listen, Dr Brive, I think you need to carefully consider your position,’ said Quaid, looking as if he had come to a decision. ‘If we can’t reach an accommodation, you and I, then you’ll be tried for murder – premeditated murder – and you don’t need me to tell you what the sentence is for that. Maybe you’ll get lucky and you won’t hang, but then again maybe you will. It’s a nasty way to die, Doctor, I can assure you of that. The noose is supposed to break your neck, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Strangling on the end of a rope, twisting around in mid-air, trussed up like a turkey … I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.’

  Quaid paused, letting his words sink in. Bertram’s face had turned white as alabaster. He was gripping the table in front of him with both hands.

  ‘But it doesn’t have to be that way,’ Quaid continued. ‘If you’re man enough to own up to what you’ve done, then I’ll make sure you’re only charged with manslaughter. You’ll be sentenced on the basis that you didn’t set out to kill your father-in-law but that you pushed him over the balustrade during an argument that got out of hand. You’ll serve a few years and then you can come out and carry on with your life, and no one need know about the blackmail problem. I’ve already told you I’ll see to that. Now what do you say? No one could say that that’s not a fair offer.’