by Graham Ison
“And you, Mr Selby, seem to be the only person to have seen her. Do you, by any chance, have a photograph of her?”
He shook his head absently. “No.” Pause. “I asked her for one, but she refused.”
“I’ll bet she did,” said Tipper, half to himself.
“She said that she always looked awful in photographs.”
“I find it strange that, even so, you should not have a photograph of the woman you intend marrying.”
“Well I haven’t.” There was a flash of anger, brought on in part by the hopelessness of the situation. His blissful happiness, the prospect of marriage to a woman he enjoyed and loved, all shattered in a single morning. “You can search my flat if you don’t believe me.”
“We did, this morning,” said Gaffney quietly.
A nervous tic appeared alongside Selby’s nose. “What right – I mean…” The sentence faded. He knew what right they had. Suddenly it seemed he was without rights. “How did you get in?”
“With your keys. We took them from you, together with your other possessions, if you remember.”
Selby nodded dumbly. He didn’t remember. The morning’s events were a jumbled blur – like a bad dream.
“Well in that case,” continued Gaffney, picking up his original question, “perhaps you’ll give us a description…” He stopped. “Better still… Harry, get hold of a photofit operator, as quick as possible. There should be one on stand-by at the Yard. We’ll get Mr Selby to make up a picture.” He stood up and walked over to the shorthand writer who had been busily taking notes throughout the interrogations of Selby. “Okay,” he said. “You can take a break.”
“Thanks very much, sir.” The shorthand writer stood up and shook his right hand. He smiled ruefully. “Cramp, sir.”
“S’what your right arm’s for,” said Gaffney unsympathetically. “While you’re taking a breather perhaps you’d get some teas,” he added. Suddenly he stopped, driving the fist on his right hand into the palm of his left. “Christ!” he said. He grabbed the DC’s arm. “Hang on here for a minute, with the prisoner.” He walked across to where Tipper was standing. “Harry, come outside.”
In the corridor outside the interview room, Gaffney asked, “Have we still got someone in Selby’s flat?”
“Yes, sir. I left a DC in there. I suppose we could pull him out now we’ve finished the search. Anyway, we can always go back.”
“That’s not what I was thinking of. Selby said that Rita Hamilton has got a set of his keys. She might turn up there, walk into the trap maybe.”
“It’s a thought,” said Tipper doubtfully, “but he also said that she rings him the day before coming.”
“Supposing she doesn’t – just walks in. It’s not a chance we can afford to take. Give that bloke a ring at Fulham, and send another bloke out there straightaway. If she turns up, nick her!”
Gaffney paced up and down the corridor smoking a cigar while Tipper was making his calls. He was now convinced that Selby was a naive, innocent fool who had been taken in by this woman, whoever she was, because somehow she had known he was an MI5 officer. He had reached the exciting point that always came in a successful enquiry when everything was about to fall into place. Nevertheless, he had a worrying feeling in the pit of his stomach that Rita Hamilton was going to elude him. If she had been instrumental in arranging the escape of Nikitin, Gesschner and the man known as Dickson, sure as hell she was going to be able to fix her own disappearance. He wondered too what the Director-General of the Security Service was going to make of it all. For certain, he was going to be none too pleased with his man Selby. Even if he escaped prison – which he probably would – he’d certainly get the sack from MI5, just for being so bloody stupid.
“You’re not going to like this, sir,” said Tipper, coming back into the corridor from the office where he had been telephoning. “She’s been and gone.”
“What?”
“Just before we finished talking to Selby apparently. I’m sure it’s her. Turned up at the flat – just walked in, using her key. I don’t know who was the more surprised.”
“What happened?”
“She and the DC came face to face in the sitting room. He told her he was a police officer and asked her who she was. She said something about being his daily.”
Gaffney laughed ironically. “Daily what?”
“Our bold detective told her that Mr Selby was away, and was likely to be away for some time. In that case, she said, she wouldn’t stay, and she left.”
“I’ll bet she did. Just wait till I get my hands on that bloody DC,” said Gaffney angrily. “Description? Did you get a description?”
“Of sorts,” said Tipper. “In a nutshell, she sounds like the most expensively dressed cleaning lady in London. But be fair, guv’nor, he wasn’t to know; you can hardly blame him…”
“Blame him,” said Gaffney, “I’ll bloody kill him. What the hell – Christ, Harry, he’s a bloody detective, not a social worker. He’s supposed to have brains, initiative. That’s why we pay them so damned much.”
“Could have fooled me,” said Tipper. “By the way, I forgot to mention it, but Joe Partridge is on the phone for you from the house.”
“What the hell does he want?” asked Gaffney, and swung into the office. He picked up the receiver. “Joe? John Gaffney. Sorry to keep you. We’ve just had a bit of a crisis; well, a bloody balls-up, more like it. What can I do for you?”
“You know that coffee table in the sitting room, sir,” said Partridge. “The one you kept your feet on?”
Gaffney chuckled. “Yeah – what about it?”
“Well that heavy top was a cavity, beautifully made, and it contained two passports: one British in the name of Mrs Rita Hamilton; the other French, in the name of Madame Estelle Bisson. Each contained a photograph of the same woman, sir.”
“Ah,” said Gaffney. “At last. Now we’ll know what the damned woman looks like. Joe, have you got a fax machine at Tavistock?”
“Oh, bless you, sir, yes. We’re quite up-to-date down here in darkest Devon.”
“Splendid. Listen, Joe, can you get those photographs faxed to me here at Rochester Row as soon as possible. Hang on, I’ll get you the number.”
*
It was exactly thirty-two minutes before the photographs came through. Gaffney knew it was thirty-two minutes because he’d timed it; and smoked another cigar and consumed two more cups of canteen tea.
Impatiently he watched the print edging its way slowly through the fax machine until finally the complete photograph was in view. Then he stood upright, slowly, his lips pursed. “Well I’ll be damned,” he said.
Chapter Twenty
As soon as he had discovered Rita Hamilton’s true identity, Gaffney had despatched a team of officers to her real address, knowing instinctively that she would not be there. The confirmation of her absence was passed to Gaffney by Detective Inspector Francis Wisley, who had spoken to some of the woman’s neighbors. They had not seen her for a day or so, and her gray Volvo estate was missing; neither event was unusual.
Gaffney alerted the officers at Tanglewood. There was an outside chance that she might arrive there, and he told them to remove all outward signs of their presence, not that they could do very much about the smashed front door; but if she got that far she would not escape. The next, and only other, move that the police could make for the time being, was to send an urgent message to all ports and airports in the United Kingdom, and then sit and wait. Gaffney decided against bothering with Interpol; even if she were traced, the woman’s lawyers would almost certainly rebut any attempt by the British to have her extradited, on the grounds that hers was a political offence.
Gaffney used the waiting time to see Sir Edward Griffin. He explained in greater detail than Tipper had done what had been found at Tanglewood, and gave him a resume of the interrogation of Selby.
“Do you think he’s implicated?” asked Griffin when he had listened to Gaffney’s ac
count.
From his pocket, Gaffney took a copy of the wanted notice which had been circulated to ports, and placed it on Griffin’s desk. “We have identified the woman,” he said, “but Selby’s adamant that he only knew her as Rita Hamilton.”
*
About sixteen million passengers travel through the port of Dover in a year, not all of them in the two million or so cars that go through there. The task of the police looking for the woman was, therefore, somewhat akin to seeking the proverbial needle in a haystack. Added to which, of course, it was by no means certain that she would go that way, assuming that she were going abroad at all. Anyway, the police were looking for a lot of other people at the same time.
Nonetheless, the information which had been received from Scotland Yard the previous evening was dutifully circulated to all the Special Branch officers on the early shift at the port. The task was made marginally easier by the knowledge that the woman was in possession of a gray Volvo estate, details of which had been passed to the staff of the ferry companies who checked the cars through, to Customs, to Immigration, and to the Harbour Board’s own police.
Detective Constable Roberts was perched on a stool in the passport control office. For two hours now, he had watched the passports being presented to the immigration officer by an unending stream of people anxious to put the English Channel between themselves and the United Kingdom. For the most part they were ordinary families in the family car, and every thirty seconds or so, a handful of passports came up through the window of the small kiosk which was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.
Every once in a while, a foot-passenger – someone without a car – sneaked along the inside of the queue of vehicles and handed a passport through the hatch.
The woman placed her French passport firmly on the counter at the window, glancing casually towards the harbour wall. The immigration officer flipped through it, seeking the rectangular stamp that would show when she had landed in the United Kingdom. There wasn’t one.
“When did you arrive, madame?”
She shook her head. “Parlez frattqais, s’il vous plait.”
The immigration officer obligingly switched to French and repeated the question.
The woman shrugged her shoulders. “Perhaps six months ago. Why do you ask?”
“There is no stamp – no landing stamp – in your passport.”
She smiled. “It is new,” she said. “It was issued at our embassy in London. Here!” She turned the page and pointed to the issuing office stamp. “Voila!” she said decisively.
The immigration officer smiled and nodded. Then he thumbed through the large book at his elbow. Of Madame Jeanne Giraud, there was no trace. He placed a triangular stamp on the first blank page and handed the passport back.
Detective Constable Roberts now faced a predicament that confronts all policemen at some stage in their working lives. The conversation about the missing stamp and the renewal of the passport had given him an opportunity to study the woman’s face. She bore a marked resemblance to the photograph of… what was that damned woman’s name? He opened his book of suspects; the copy of the message and the photograph were folded into the back. He studied it. The photograph was not good, having suffered the deterioration, first of the facsimile transmission, and second, the photocopier. Anyway, that woman – the one who had just gone through – was French. But it damned well looked like her. Then again she was a foot-passenger. He looked at the message once more; she was supposed to have a gray Volvo estate. He read the footnote to the message: “Wanted by Detective Chief Superintendent Gaffney, Special Branch, Metropolitan; detain but do not question.” Must be serious – big stuff. It was not often that a detective chief superintendent in Special Branch wanted someone detained. What the hell was he to do? Let her go and regret it for ever more, or stop her and get done for wrongful arrest?
He looked across into the neighboring booth. Perhaps he could unload it on to his sergeant. The sergeant wasn’t there. Damn! That was it then.
He caught up with Madame Giraud just as she got to the ramp of the ferry. “Excuse me, madame.” She stopped and turned. “I am a police officer,” he said.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Ne comprends pas,” she said.
“Police,” said Roberts, articulating the word as though speaking to someone who could only lip-read, and produced his warrant card.
“Police?” She repeated the word and shrugged again.
“You come with me,” said Roberts, and gesticulated with extravagant sign language.
She looked at the officer, then glanced around the huge arena of the ferry-port. In one direction lay the ship, and two crewmen standing on the ramp talking to a customs officer; in the other, the terminal buildings and the vast, sheer face of the white cliffs of Dover. There was nowhere to go. She shrugged again. “Okay,” she said.
In the office, Roberts left a WDC with Madame Giraud and went into the detective inspector’s office to tell him who he thought he had got in the outer room.
The DI walked to his door, opened it, and gazed at the woman. He closed the door again and walked back to his desk. “What’s she got to say for herself?”
“She only speaks French, sir.”
“Jesus Christ, Robby. Look at the bloody message: the wanted woman’s English; and you tell me she only speaks French.”
“I think it’s a try-on, sir.”
“Well for your sake I bloody hope so.” He pointed to the telephone on his desk. “Get on the blower to this DCS in London. See what he’s got to say. In the meantime, I’ll get hold of Fred Birkinshaw, he speaks fluent frog – he can talk to her. He can even start to apologize for making her miss her boat, I suppose.”
Roberts began to feel less comfortable. He should have let the woman go. No one would have known, and he had to admit, now that she was in the office, that she looked less like the photograph than he first thought. “Damn!” he said for about the tenth time, and dialed the number of New Scotland Yard.
*
Tipper was unimpressed. He’d already had a number of false alarms, and one bright spark at Heathrow Airport had even had an aircraft brought back after take-off, only to discover that his woman suspect was a respectable American, traveling with her husband, both of whom had vowed never to come to England again. In addition, the airline had promised to send the substantial bill for the recall of their aircraft to the Commissioner. Despite all that, Tipper listened patiently to Roberts’s detailed description.
“What d’you want me to do, sir?” asked the unhappy Roberts. “See what you can get from her,” said Tipper “And ring me back.”
“But the message said not to question her, sir.”
“Do it!” said Tipper.
When Roberts returned to the outer office, Detective Sergeant Birkinshaw was engaged in deep conversation with the woman, but broke off immediately. “Here,” he said, taking Roberts’s arm and steering him towards the far side of the office, “she’s not best pleased with you, mate. Getting very uptight about missing her ferry, and wants to know what it’s all about. She says she’s done nothing wrong, and there’s nothing wrong with her passport.”
“Oh Christ!” said Roberts.
“Well you’re going to have to make up your mind, mate. Think of something to charge her with, or let her go. I’ll tell you one thing though, for what it’s worth: she’s not French.”
“Not French?”
“Nope! Her accent’s wrong, even if her passport does say she was born in Marseilles.”
“Excuse me, guv.” Birkinshaw and Roberts broke off their conversation. A Dover Harbor Board policeman stood in the doorway, his pocket book open.
“What is it, mate?” said Birkinshaw, walking across to him. “Can’t you see we’re busy?”
“This car – this gray Volvo estate, guv.” The policeman pointed to his pocket book.
“Yeah, what about it?”
“It’s in the long-stay car-park, guv.”
> *
Two and a half hours later, Tipper walked into the Special Branch office at Eastern Docks. “Well, well, Mrs Hodder,” he said. “Fancy seeing you again.” He turned to the detective. “Well done.”
“Nothing to it, sir,” said Birkinshaw, preening himself.
*
Julia Hodder was also taken to Rochester Row police station, and lodged in a cell only a few feet away from that occupied by Peter Selby, although neither knew of the other’s presence there.
Gaffney’s men had searched the Hodders’ house in Surrey as a matter of routine. They hadn’t expected to find anything incriminating and they weren’t disappointed. Living as the wife of an MI5 officer would have made it extremely hazardous for Julia to leave anything lying about that her husband might have found. The French passport which she had used when she tried to leave the country had probably been secreted somewhere else; might even have been in a safety deposit box at the bank.
Gaffney and Tipper didn’t interrogate her immediately; they spent what little remained of the day in a hurriedly convened conference with a senior official at the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Sir Edward Griffin, the Director-General of the Security Service, was there also, as was Commander Frank Hussey of Special Branch.
During that time, both the DPP’s man and Griffin spoke on the telephone to the Attorney-General. Selby, an MI5 intelligence officer, had admitted to having an affair with Julia Hodder, believing her to be Rita Hamilton, or so he said; and had stayed with her at Tanglewood, the house where police had discovered spying paraphernalia. And finally, Julia Hodder had been apprehended trying to leave the country on a false passport.
The lawyer had already started to draft the offences for which Julia Hodder could be arraigned under the Official Secrets Acts, and other acts dealing with the acquisition and uttering of forged or false passports, but in any case involving espionage there were always political considerations. The lawyer was concerned only with the legal aspects; Sir Edward Griffin’s interest spread across the wider field of intelligence. The arbiter in all this was the Attorney-General, who had a foot in each camp, and without whose fiat a case of spying could not be brought to trial. He was essentially a lawyer, but he was also a politician; susceptible, therefore, to the blandishments of the intelligence community and, in the long term, the views of the Foreign Secretary and his advisers. And if a deal was thought to be to the overall advantage of Her Majesty’s government, then the rule of law was conveniently forgone. It all hinged on what Julia Hodder had to say.