Hopjoy Was Here f-3

by Colin Watson

  All these hazards were negotiated with smooth synchronization by the Bentley, presided over by Ross. He remained calm, indulgent, interested.

  Just short of a large, pale blue sign mounted on posts, Ross drew the car to a halt. At his request Pumphrey wound down the window on his side and Ross leaned across him, calling to the squat, sceptical looking man who lounged against one of the sign’s supports.

  “I say, I wonder if you could tell me in which part of the town I can find the police headquarters.”

  The man silently regarded the casual balance of the traveller’s forward-thrust shoulder, its suiting of hand-blended Newbiggin wool and linen dyed to the colour of Chartres Cathedral, the musicianly hands that sprang so surprisingly from wrists as powerful as a road driller’s. He shifted his glance to Ross’s face; a patient face, not very handsome, the face of a questioner and connoisseur, a trader—in the last resort—of pain.

  When the man’s slow scrutiny reached Ross’s eyes he saw they were lifted to absorb the message of the tall, clean lettering above them. FLAXBOROUGH WELCOMES CAREFUL DRIVERS.

  The man politely awaited the descent of Ross’s gaze before he carefully cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Piss off,” he said.

  The Chief Constable of Flaxborough, Mr Harcourt Chubb, received his London visitors with a degree of affability that he calculated would fall just short of making them feel entitled to put him to any trouble. He introduced Purbright, who found Ross’s handshake a shade prolonged and somewhat exploratory, and Pumphrey’s over-firm, like that of a man for ever determined to make his first friend.

  All but Mr Chubb sat down. He stepped back and relaxed his tall, lean body against the mantelpiece, with one arm extended along it.

  Ross glanced at him, then at Purbright.

  “I assume, inspector, that Mr Chubb has explained the nature of our interest in this little affair of yours at...Flaxborough.” The small hesitation was eloquent of the orientation difficulties of the much travelled. Perhaps the day before it had been Istambul or Adelaide that needed to be slotted into some similar interview.

  Purbright inclined his head. “I do understand that one of these missing people, a man called Hopjoy, happens to be...”

  “...One of our fellows, yes.” Ross completed the identification with brisk despatch, then looked intently at Purbright. “Of course, you see how we might be placed?”

  “Not precisely, sir.”

  Pumphrey’s cheek twitched with disapproval of the provincial policeman’s obtuseness. “It simply means that, security-wise...” He stopped and turned his eyes, like those of an El Greco Christ, upon Ross.

  Ross smiled patiently. “Thimble Bay. Let’s start from there, shall we? I don’t have to tell you about the Thimble Bay Establishment. Couldn’t, anyway—not above Sensitivity Three, and you wouldn’t be much wiser if I did. But you’ll understand the place is very much our pigeon. Hence Hopjoy. Among others, naturally.”

  “That much I had gathered,” Purbright said. “Of course, Thimble Bay is not usually considered to be in this locality, sir.”

  “Really?” Ross sounded surprised. He glanced across at the Chief Constable, as a misled traveller might appeal direct to the king of the country whose inhabitants have proved wayward. “How far, Mr Chubb, would you say Thimble Bay is from here?”

  The Chief Constable diffidently waved one of his fine flexible, hands. “I really can’t tell you. Mr Purbright will know.”

  “Twenty-seven miles, sir.”

  A little puff of disparagement issued from Pumphrey’s black, up-tilted nostrils. “Well, that may seem a long way to you, inspector, but, good heavens, globe-wise...”

  “My colleague,” Ross broke in, “doesn’t mean to sound like an astronomer. We do appreciate that you have quite enough on your plate without worrying about what goes on a couple of counties away. It’s just that we have to take rather long views in our job.” He gave a sudden placatory grin and drew a cigarette case from an inner pocket. “Tell me, do you find time to play cricket, inspector?”

  “No, sir,” replied Purbright, no less pleasantly.

  For a fraction of a second the pressure of Ross’s thumb on the catch of the cigarette case was arrested. Then he completed the movement and offered a cigarette first to Mr Chubb, who pursed his lips in refusal, and then to Purbright. Pumphrey seemed not to qualify.

  “The reason I ask,” Ross went on, “is this. Picture Thimble Bay as the wicket. Security is simply a matter of placing fielders. You know, slips, cover-point, silly mid-off, square check...”

  “I don’t play lacrosse either, sir,” murmured Purbright.

  “Square check,” repeated Ross. “Wrong game. Yes, you’re perfectly right. Full marks.” He leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. “But you’ve caught on, haven’t you, to what I mean about fielding. Hopjoy—we’ll call him that—was our Flaxborough long-stop, so to speak.”

  Purbright digested the metaphor, with which Ross was looking very satisfied. “His job, then, was to intercept such information as happened to leak in this direction.” He turned to the Chief Constable. “I had no idea we were on a spying route; had you, sir?”

  “Certainly not,” said Mr Chubb. “This isn’t...”—he sought a sufficiently preposterous location—“Algiers or...or Dublin.”

  Ross carefully tapped the ash from his cigarette. “You know Dublin, Mr Chubb?” he inquired of the ashtray.

  “I can’t say that I do. Why?”

  “The name seemed to occur to you.”

  “Oh, that. Well. Roger Casement and everything...association of ideas, I suppose.” To his bewilderment Mr Chubb found himself thinking defensively. He closed his mouth firmly and glanced up at the office clock.

  Pumphrey seemed about to slip in a supplementary question but Ross, suddenly benign, reached over and took from his lap the briefcase he had been nursing. “This,” he explained to Purbright, “is pretty sensitive stuff. You’ll appreciate that I can’t let you right into the picture, but these reports from Hopjoy do suggest that he might have been on to something.”

  He took from his pocket a number of coins and selected what appeared to be an ordinary florin. “Special knurling,” he observed, indicating the coin’s rim. Then he slipped it into a slot in the otherwise featureless lock of the case and turned it carefully. Purbright guessed that the fine-toothed rim was engaging a tiny gear within the lock. After a second or two there was a click and the flap of the case hung open.

  Ross drew out a slim sheaf of papers and began glancing through them without disturbing their order. Purbright caught sight of a couple of maps and a number of smaller sheets that appeared to be accounts. The rest of the papers bore closely-spaced typing, neatly indented and with underlined sub-headings. “Most meticulous chap,” Ross murmured.

  The Chief Constable shifted his position slightly and rubbed his chin with two fingers. “We realize,” he said, “that Mr Hopjoy was engaged on somewhat delicate work involving matters that do not concern us as ordinary policemen. What does concern us, though, is the probability of a crime having been committed. Let me be quite frank, gentlemen: to what extent are we going to be able to collaborate in sorting this business out?”

  Ross looked a little surprised. “Fully I trust, Mr Chubb. That is why Mr Pumphrey and I are here—to be kept informed with the least inconvenience to you.”

  It was Chubb’s turn to raise his brows. “I had hoped for something rather more reciprocal, Mr Ross.” He looked meaningfully at the Hopjoy file. “If it turns out that your man was done away with, the answer might very well lie there.”

  “That’s true.” There was a note of doubt in Ross’s voice. “The trouble is that this stuff hasn’t been processed thoroughly yet. Our people gave it a preliminary feed through R Section but the report wasn’t terribly suggestive. All Hopjoy’s leads are green. Linkage negative. Well...” He shrugged and gave Pumphrey a glance that invited confirmation of their difficulties. Pumphrey respond
ed with a judicial nod.

  The inspector, who had been listening with polite attention, asked: “What are green leads, Mr Ross?”

  “And negative linkages?” threw in Chubb, without sounding in the least curious.

  Ross beamed. The sudden smile invested his large, rather lumpishly cast face with a charm that was the greater for being unexpected, like greenery on a pit heap. “I’m sorry about the technicalities,” he said. “A green lead is what you might call a new suspect, someone with no history of unreliability.”

  “Very tricky,” observed Pumphrey, joining the tips of his long, hair-backed fingers.

  “And by linkage negative,” Ross went on, “we mean that the person in question can’t be shown to have contact with any other bad security risks. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before we put that right: no one can keep to himself indefinitely. There’s the chance meeting in a pub, membership of the same library, connexions dating back to schooldays...oh, lord, we can trace them, don’t you worry.”

  Ross pressed out the stub of his cigarette, on which he had drawn scarcely at all since lighting it, and took from his pocket a long, slim pipe with a squat, highly-polished bowl. This he filled carefully, holding it close against his stomach, from a pouch of Andalusian doeskin (which honey curing makes the softest hide in the world.) Between studied applications of the match flame, he tamped down the pure Latakia with a small metal ram. Seeing Purbright’s interest, Ross waited until the tobacco glowed securely then tossed the object across to him.

  Purbright rolled the still hot cylinder around his cupped palm. It was a little under an inch long and consisted of half a dozen tiny discs or washers clamped together by a central screw. Half the discs were copper and the remainder of some white metal. The two kinds were set alternately.

  “A memento of the Lubianka,” Ross said. He stared straight ahead over the pipe bowl and rhythmically released portentous pops of smoke from the corner of his mouth. Then he stretched to reclaim the cylinder from Purbright.

  “When this,” he said, “is slipped into a hole drilled in one of a man’s vertebrae, a galvanic reaction is set up between the dissimilar metals. By the time the wound heals, a constant electric current is being fed into his spinal cord. The secret police call the spasms of his death agony the Gold and Silver Waltz.”

  The strained silence that ensued was broken by the Chief Constable, who enquired if Mr Ross was prepared to do any interviewing in Flaxborough in pursuit of whatever line of investigation seemed suggested in the reports of the missing agent.

  Ross squeezed a noise of assent past his pipe stem then removed and examined it. “I was going to ask you,” he said, “just how amenable to questioning I might expect to find the people around here.”

  “What is their co-operation-potential?” Pumphrey translated.

  “A very decent lot, by and large,” replied Mr Chubb, “if you know how to handle them.”

  “Oh, well, that’s all right, then.” Ross decided against citing the unencouraging example of the man he had asked the way to the police station. “For a start, perhaps you’d better tell us how you see this business, Purbright. Any ideas?”

  The inspector, answering without haste, gazed directly but mildly at Ross’s face. This now wore an expression of eager courtesy—that look which is only a polite version of imperiousness.

  “Beyond the not particularly intelligent deduction that someone was murdered in that house and his body disposed of,” Purbright began, “I can’t pretend to having much to offer. Not even the fact of murder can be confirmed until the laboratory reports come through although, as I say, I haven’t much doubt of it. Then the question of identity will have to be settled. We are in no position at the moment to say who killed whom. Naturally, we assume the choice lies between the owner of the house, Periam, and your man Hopjoy. You, sir, might have reasons of your own for supposing Hopjoy to be the more likely candidate...”

  “Not necessarily,” Ross broke in. “Our chaps are fairly adept at looking after themselves, you know. We give them credit for that.”

  “You mean you would not be surprised to find that it was Periam who was killed?”

  “In my job, Purbright, we soon lose all capacity for being surprised.”

  “But if Hopjoy was responsible...”

  “Then he must have had some very compelling reason.” Ross removed his pipe and squinted along its stem. “Mind you, I think that possibility is unlikely. I’m not aware that Hopjoy had any general authorization to take executive decisions. On the other hand, I shouldn’t necessarily have been informed if he had.”

  “Well, that’s helpful, I must say,” said the Chief Constable. “Don’t any of you chaps know what you’re up to?” Flushing slightly, he straightened and stood clear of the mantelpiece. “Four years ago I received a confidential request to give this fellow Hopjoy co-operation if he asked for it and not to bother him if he didn’t. Fair enough. As it happens, he never came to us for anything. But there were one or two occasions when we were able to smooth things out for him in little ways behind the scenes. There was no fuss, no gossip, nothing.” Chubb spread his hands and nodded. “All right, we were just doing our duty. But now”—he jabbed a finger in Ross’s direction—“it looks as if something has happened that can’t be glossed over. Something absolutely intolerable. And you must realize, Mr Ross, that I have no intention of allowing my officers to temper their efforts to solve this crime with consideration for what you may regard as higher policy.”

  Purbright, who had been examining his finger-ends while marvelling at the length and vehemence of Chubb’s speech, looked up blandly at Ross. It was Pumphrey, though, who spoke first.

  “It seems to me, Mr Chubb, that you don’t quite understand that this business involves security.” The final word leaped from the rest of the tightly controlled sentence like a whippet trying to break its leash.

  Ross, still amiable and matter-of-fact, gave a quick, chairman-like glance round the others, reserving for the Chief Constable a smile that promised concession. “No,” he said, “that’s not altogether fair. Mr Chubb appreciates that this affair has certain delicate features, but a crime’s a crime and he’s perfectly right to view this one from the standpoint of the very good policeman we all know him to be. Of course the investigation must proceed in the way he thinks best. Major Pumphrey and I ask only that we be allowed to assist with what specialized knowledge we have.”

  Like a peal proclaiming a peace treaty, the ringing of the telephone on Chubb’s desk provided a distraction from uncharitable thoughts. At a nod from the Chief Constable, Purbright took the call.

  When he replaced the receiver he thrust a hand beneath his jacket, scratched himself gently, and announced: “The car’s been traced, anyway. At the moment it’s parked in the Neptune yard at Brockleston. It might be as well if I nipped over there now, don’t you think, sir?”

  Chapter Five

  The thirty-mile drive to Brockleston brought Purbright into the town’s main street at exactly five o’clock, when it looked like a row of aquarium tanks.

  Staring out at him from behind the windows of the twenty-three cafés and snack bars were the perplexed, hostile eyes of holiday-makers awaiting the fish and chips, pies and chips, ham and chips, egg and chips, sausage and chips—in fact, every permutation of succulence except chips and chips—that were being borne to their plastic-topped tables by girls with corded necks and dress seams strained to the limit as they ferried their great trays.

  Brockleston was a day trippers’ resort. Its resident population, no greater than that of a village, occupied a string of timber bungalows on the lee side of the dunes or lived in the flats above the few shops not associated with the chips industry. There were no boarding houses, for the ephemeral pleasures of the place did not justify a protracted visit. The dunes, while adequate for desultory, gritty fornication, served no other purpose than mercifully to screen a muddy beach from which jutted derelict anti-tank blocks. The sea at
most times was an afternoon’s, march away.

  Yet it was the sea, distinctly visible as a glinting streak of silver beyond the steamy, creek-veined plain, and therefore an object of pilgrimage, that accounted for all the coming and going along the Flaxborough road, the seasonal cramming of the twenty-three cafés and two small pubs, and the enforced but bitterly begrudged construction by the rural council of a public convenience whose necessarily ample proportions had earned it the local epithet of the Taj Mahal.