The Cold North Sea

by The Cold North Sea (retail) (epub)

  Annie, where are you?

  There was a rattle and clang at the door as it was unlocked – an unnecessary precaution, he thought, given that he was already handcuffed to a long chain attached to an iron ring in the floor.

  Shackled again by the police.

  Detective Coates entered, followed by a mousy-looking constable, a young, skinny chap with curly red hair, probably half Finch’s own age. They scraped back chairs on the other side of the table and sat down, Coates directly opposite him. The pair seemed eminently unthreatening, but the process of police interrogation was theatre, he knew – appearances, the atmosphere, it was all part of the performance.

  Coates didn’t look up. He spent a minute or two flipping through a cardboard folder stuffed with documents. Again, Finch supposed, per an unwritten script – any detective worth his salt, certainly on the trail of such a purportedly dangerous felon as himself, would surely know his stuff already.

  Eventually Coates’ eyes flicked up. He conveyed the air of a bank clerk and had affected the mannerisms of a mid-level bumbler.

  That little routine about forgetting to show his badge.

  But, Finch knew, you didn’t rise to his rank in Scotland Yard, and certainly not within the mysterious Special Branch, by being a lightweight – not after the clear-out following the Ripper fiasco. Behind the glasses, the brown beady eyes were clear and sharp.

  ‘Just who are you, Dr Finch?’ he began.

  Who am I?

  The cryptic opener told Finch there was no rush on their part. They suspected no one of Annie’s abduction but himself.

  ‘I am, Detective, as I keep telling you, a man seriously… very seriously concerned for the welfare of Mrs Annie Pointer…’

  The constable started taking notes.

  ‘…As I said before, I can identify the persons I believe to be behind her abduction. What’s more, I have an idea where she may be being held: 11 Chepstow Place, Bayswater, W2… Possibly by a man named Chilcot, in conjunction with another individual who passes himself off as a private investigator called Clive Vax. Vax has an office in Dean Street, Soho, and keeps a basement flat at 29B Fitzroy Square, W1, which may yield further evidence… I’ve told you this already… Whatever was done was most likely conducted in the company of their hired muscle, an oversized thug named Smert…’

  They said nothing.

  ‘…My guess is that they’re holding her as a deterrent.’

  ‘A deterrent?’ blurted Coates.

  ‘Against me… I’ve been investigating something… stumbled upon something of great importance… national importance… something they’re involved in. They must feel I’ve got too close. Either that or they just want me out of the picture because of something she… Annie… Mrs Pointer… now knows, too.’

  The detective and the constable exchanged a glance.

  ‘And really, what might that be, Dr Finch?’

  There was a hint of sarcasm.

  ‘Look… I’m not sure…’

  ‘Not sure of what?’

  ‘It’s an issue of trust.’

  ‘You are in Scotland Yard, Dr Finch, the epicentre of British law enforcement. If there is something you wish to share…’

  ‘In my experience the police have not exactly been my friends, either now or in the past. Your chums in Norfolk just tried to kill me.’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion, Dr Finch.’

  ‘It is my opinion they’re as bent as a nine-bob note.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yep, right up there with the Military Foot Police.’

  ‘The Military Foot Police?’

  ‘It’s all right, Detective, you don’t have to play the innocent. The whole world and his mother seem to have read my file. And you, being Special Branch—’

  ‘Your file is a restricted matter for the military authorities, Dr Finch.’

  ‘Your pal Superintendent Dryden didn’t seem to think so.’

  ‘True, we are aware of some previous “incident” in South Africa,’ said Coates. ‘But the details, officially, remain classified.’

  ‘Look – then, as now, there’s a high-level game going on. And once again I’ve been sucked into it, entirely unwittingly.’

  ‘And what game might that be?’

  ‘Nothing personal, Detective, but at this point I’m not prepared to comment. I’d prefer to speak to someone from the War Office.’

  Detective Coates shrugged and returned to his folder. He flipped through what appeared to be a collection of statements and something that looked like a hand-drawn timeline.

  ‘According to our records you went missing from St Albans on Monday the 14th of November.’

  ‘For God’s sake, man, are you not listening? Every second counts!’

  ‘The preceding Tuesday, the 8th of November, you had an altercation with a Mr Sidney Pickersgill in the Six Bells public house, St Albans.’

  ‘JESUS CHRIST! A WOMAN’S LIFE IS AT STAKE!’

  Finch stood up, straining at his chain. The constable rose, ready to intervene, but the detective remained sitting. He casually removed his spectacles, rubbed his eyes, then looped them back over his ears – like a jaded, career-worn teacher, waiting till his classroom had calmed down.

  ‘Dr Finch, I am a reasonable man,’ he said. ‘I’ll have no truck with outbursts of temper or raised voices. This interview – whether you like it or not – will proceed all the way to its conclusion and in a civilised fashion. We can do it peacefully and methodically, or we can call a halt until you have regained your composure…’

  Finch sat down and hissed out a sigh. He would have to play it their way.

  ‘Please, Detective,’ he urged, straining to keep his voice down. ‘The reason I am so exercised is for the very reason I have been insisting all along. Annie… Mrs Pointer… It’s not me who’s taken her… I swear… Just hear me out on this…’

  ‘Dr Finch. Do you really think we have been doing nothing while you have been sitting in here?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean to suggest—’

  ‘Whether you choose to believe it or not, we actually paid full attention to the information you gave us in the car on the way over…’

  ‘Thank you!’

  ‘…and it remains the reason why we are so – to put it politely – sceptical about everything you have told us.’

  ‘Sceptical?’

  Coates looked down and shuffled his notes.

  ‘…I’m afraid we can find no such person called Chilcot, or for that matter a private investigator named Clive Vax. As for their properties – the office at the top of the stairs opposite the York Minster pub is vacant; it has had no tenant for six months and is currently home to some rather worn office furniture and nothing else—’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Likewise, the basement flat in Fitzroy Square… 29B. It’s the registered pied-à-terre of a gentleman named Ingram, an importer of sugar cane who is currently away on business tending to his holdings in Trinidad… And as for 11 Chepstow Place…’

  ‘Did you go there?’

  The detective gave a faint smile and a shrug of the shoulders.

  ‘It was an interesting suggestion, Dr Finch. Quite the riddle.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘I think you know.’

  He returned to his folder.

  ‘As I was saying… Mr Sidney Pickersgill…’

  Finch sighed with exasperation and put his head in his hands.

  ‘Jesus Christ, man, am I forever to be surrounded by imbeciles?!’

  ‘…was a known associate of yours from the South African War. We believe him to have had access to this classified information we just mentioned – possibly incriminating information about certain aspects of your involvement in the war, possibly for use as blackmail against you – and Mrs Pointer, too, for that matter.’

  Finch just shook his head.

  ‘On Saturday, the…’

  He flipped back and forth trying
to find the date.

  ‘The 12th,’ interjected the constable.

  ‘…he was taken into your home. On the basis of a petty theft – a staged petty theft, according to our colleagues in Hertfordshire – and of a matching firearm found in your possession, we have good reason to believe that you were party to his—’

  ‘Representation. I want a legal representation… I demand legal representation.’

  The detective sat back. He let the pause hang.

  ‘That’s strange, sir. A minute ago you were stressing the urgency of the situation. Now time has become suddenly elastic. You wish to set back proceedings for an hour or two while we find you a brief?’

  ‘Forgive me, but if you can’t locate a four-storey townhouse in the middle of London, I don’t have much faith in your ability to pursue the rest of this investigation.’

  Coates nodded to the constable, who shut his notebook. The detective closed his folder. They both stood, as if to leave.

  ‘Very well, Dr Finch. Anyone in mind?’

  They had him, he knew.

  ‘Okay, Detective, you win…’

  There was no option but to let the detective unburden himself.

  ‘…Of course I wish to carry on.’

  He slumped back and folded his arms as best he could, given his restraints. The men sat back down.

  ‘Like I say, the alleged robbery was most probably staged… orchestrated, by your own hand,’ Coates continued, now switching his tense to the present, as if talking Finch through a crime scene, ‘but the purported burglar, your alleged blackmailer, Mr Pickersgill, ends up dead, most likely killed with a bullet from your army-issue Webley revolver… On Sunday the…’

  ‘Thirteenth,’ offered the constable.

  ‘…you are arrested and taken into local police custody, are released on a technicality, though still a person of interest, but, the very next morning, Monday the…’

  ‘Fourteenth.’

  ‘Thank you, Constable, I think I could manage that one… you respond by absconding from your work and heading into London where you not only have a public spat in a public park with Mrs Pointer but, according to a reader’s ticket issued in your name at Somerset House, and according to the clerk who inducted you, you research the background and address of Mr Sidney Pickersgill, leading you, next day, Tuesday the…’

  The constable went to help again but Coates raised his hand.

  ‘…15th… to head, via a decoy route, to his home town of Endthorpe, Norfolk, with the intention, we believe, of finding out with whom else he may have shared this privileged information.’

  Finch blew out an exaggerated sigh of boredom.

  ‘On arrival, you harass members of the local fishing community at their place of work and in the Coronet pub, from which you are duly ejected. You then ask probing questions of a landlady at a local bed and breakfast… What’s more, you are now using an alias…’

  ‘Leonard Cox,’ went the constable.

  ‘…to throw people off the scent… You then, yesterday, the 16th, further antagonise Pickersgill’s colleague, Nathan Cole, a disabled serviceman, another veteran of South Africa, whom you believe to have knowledge of your affairs also. And when the local police superintendent…’

  ‘Dryden,’ the constable chipped in.

  ‘…is called in… a man, I might add, who had, in the process of his investigation, as you suggest, uncovered some details of your past, you then choose to silence him… fatally… shooting him twice with a service-issue Lee–Enfield rifle, apparently stolen from Mr Cole.’

  Finch could take it no more.

  ‘I’m sorry, Detective, but this is pure and utter bollocks.’

  Coates raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I mean,’ added Finch, ‘you’re daresay going to throw in the bit about the same Lee–Enfield rifle being found on the beach with “Ingo Cox, assassin” self-carved into the butt.’

  Coates did his glasses-on, glasses-off thing again.

  ‘There’s no need for sarcasm, Dr Finch.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘But yes, the weapon in question was found too, washed up the next morning on the mud flats, along with, nearby, your jacket and rucksack.’

  He returned to his notes.

  ‘We’re still not sure whether you were clumsy and had fallen in the water in your struggle with Dryden – you have plenty of wounds to suggest as much…’

  He gestured at the gash on Finch’s forehead and the cuts on his wrists.

  ‘…to go with the flash burn on your right hand, most likely from discharging said weapon, and which had not been present during your police interview on Sunday…’

  He nodded at it, too.

  ‘…or had even been so ambitious… so sophisticated as to fake your own death in order to continue your apparent mission to liquidate all interested parties.’

  ‘Well bravo for my ingenuity,’ snipped Finch.

  ‘You then appear at the Savoy Hotel this morning, having been witnessed going up to the penthouse via a service lift, duping a young porter…’

  ‘Mr Pandit Mirza,’ said the constable.

  ‘He is entirely blameless,’ interjected Finch. ‘Please do not punish him.’

  ‘…and are later seen vacating the premises, avoiding the Savoy’s house security guards, and wearing Mrs Pointer’s husband’s clothes.’

  ‘All true,’ said Finch, ‘but with a perfectly logical explanation.’

  ‘The next thing we know is that Mrs Pointer is gone, an alarm has been raised – by your Mr Mirza as it turns out – who then destroys his own credit by tipping you off that the police are on to you…’

  ‘I told you, he is blameless. He was, quite innocently, doing as was asked of him.’

  ‘And so that brings us up to where we are now, Dr Finch – with you apprehended, not a hundred yards from the Savoy, in what we suspect are further stolen garments, with Mrs Pointer’s book, a novel, in your pocket and in possession of Colt sidearm with the serial number filed off, a weapon which you acquired on the black market at the York Minster pub in Soho along with twelve feet of rope… as yet unaccounted for… the purposes of which, we suspect, were for the securing of Mrs Annie Pointer as part of said abduction.’

  Finch sighed.

  ‘Cole,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a great big hole in this compelling yarn of yours. Nathan Cole.’

  Coates attended to his spectacles again. He took them off, breathed on them, got out a white cotton handkerchief and gave them a thorough polish.

  ‘Mr Nathan Cole?’

  ‘Damn right, Mr Nathan Bloody Cole – pull the bastard in and get him to tell you what really happened in Norfolk. But, for Christ’s sake, in the meantime…!’

  Coates slowly, deliberately hooked his glasses back on.

  ‘Dr Finch… This morning, Nathan Cole’s body was found on the marshes at Blakeney…’

  He looked Finch directly in the eye. A chilling stare. The bumbling clerk had gone.

  ‘So, I’m going to ask you again – Mrs Annie Pointer… What have you done with her?’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  After hearing the back door close, Mordecai waited a few minutes and then went downstairs. He wanted to be sure – not only that the woman had definitely left, but that all was as it should be. He checked every room of the house. He looked under every table, every bed, behind every door, every curtain, in every cupboard, every wardrobe.

  The house had not been lived in for a while. Dust and cobwebs were accumulating, there were piles of mouse droppings. He grew angry at the casual waste of space when there were overcrowded, squalid slums not five miles to the east. The inequality seemed criminal.

  He descended to the kitchen in the basement. The pots and pans had been neatly stacked away. There were two exterior doors the woman had failed to inform him about, though both were securely bolted, as was the front door and all the ground floor windows.

  In the hallway
, the grandfather clock ticked away. The house had been tended frequently enough for someone to come in and wind it… and, for that matter, to tidy up the post, some of which had been stashed on a table by the front door.

  The clock had chimed on the half-hour – half past two. He checked it against the smart silver Hunter pocket watch that the rich man had given him, one with ‘Hay of Shrewsbury’ stamped on the reverse.

  Satisfied that he was alone and secure, Mordecai unlocked the back door in the way he had been instructed – the two deadbolts, the conventional latch – testing, checking and rechecking, to make sure that he could do so instinctively and effortlessly.

  Knowledge of geography, especially of the escape route, was a crucial part of his trade. He had learned the layout of the streets and the surrounding area; now he was familiarising himself with the house and the immediate environment.

  Mordecai went back out, down through the garage. Cautiously he peered into the mews alleyway. It was empty as before, only this time with the doors now pulled across the garage that housed the Rolls-Royce. There was no more banging and bashing; the mechanic had ceased his swearing.

  Mordecai did not think the man had seen him and thanked God for that. If he had, he would be a witness, and would have to be eliminated. As for people looking into the alley from upper-floor windows, someone who may have observed him casually? – he could not tell. But he had kept close to the wall, restricting the sightline. He did not think he could be identified.

  In the garage, he lifted the heavy, circular cast-iron drain cover with ‘Willenhall’ stamped on it, scraping it to one side. He dropped a small stone down and waited for the splash. It was good ten-foot drop. The water, he had been assured, was deep enough.

  He re-entered the house, relocked the front door and went back up the stairs to the attic. At fifty feet up, he had a good view across the gardens and, crucially, across the road. But this is where the woman had been wrong… Yes, the left-hand window opened easily enough and afforded an unobstructed view. He could see each carriageway clearly and the traffic moving back and forth. The pedestrians, too.

  But it was the right-hand one he preferred and had selected long before he had even entered the building. To the uninitiated, this made no sense. Unlike the left window, the right’s view was partially obscured by a plane tree… one of the rich man’s beloved plane trees. But that was the point. It gave him cover. He could take his shot right between the branches.