Motorbike Men

by Duncan James

  “Thank you, comrade Director,” said Makienko.

  He made his way out of the building to a waiting car. It was a chilly evening, and he put on his overcoat as he crossed the pavement, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets.

  His blood ran cold.

  The right hand pocket was missing.

  The pocket in which the phial of poison had been kept, and to which it been returned almost empty, had been neatly cut out and removed.

  Ten days later, he returned to London on the evening Aeroflot flight, SU240. Dusty Miller was not at the foot of the Airbus A320 steps to meet him, or in the arrivals hall, as he mingled with the airport crowds. The man on the immigration desk let him through without question. Once again, he was travelling on his own, rather than a diplomatic passport, as a visiting businessman. He made his own way to the Russian Consulate trade delegation offices in Highgate, where he was to be based for as long as it took him to complete his new assignment.

  It was their double agent in London who tipped off MI5 that Dmitry Makienko was back in town.

  ***

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - THE GOLDFISH BOWL

  Bill Clayton had already been to visit the professor a couple of times. His first visit was a few days after Barclay had been spirited away from Buscot to Harley Street for some plastic surgery on his scar. Doc. Perkins had arranged it, and one of the country’s top people had done a pretty good job with a small skin graft. Mark Perkins and the surgeon were both convinced that, in a week or so, you would only be able to see the scar if you knew where to look. That was just what Clayton needed to know. If the surgery was a success, then Barclay could start to assume his new personality. Barclay was as relieved as anyone.

  “Apart from the physical and psychological side of this little exercise,” Clayton had told Barclay, “there’s quite a bit of paper work to be done, so we may as well get started.”

  “There’s always paper work to be done,” grumbled Barclay.

  “There are two really important things for you to decide. First of all, there are bound to be a few people who need to know you are still around – people you would want to know that Professor Jack Barclay is still alive, after you are officially declared dead. People like your Director at Culham, your immediate deputy on the fusion team, other close colleagues and perhaps a few friends. People you can really trust and who really need to know. I want a list from you as soon as possible, so that we can thoroughly double check them for security and reliability. Keep the list as short as you can, please – no more than six if possible.

  “Secondly, we need you to pick a new name for yourself, so that we can start preparing all the new documents you need. And there’s lots of them, not just a new passport and driving licence, but things like a birth certificate and everything from there on in, like graduation certificates, the electoral register and so on. But we need a name.”

  “I’ve already been thinking about a new name,” said Barclay. “I would like to take on my brother’s Christian name, Roger, and thought that Lloyd might be a good surname. I’m already named after a bank, after all!”

  “Better than Nat West, I suppose,” joked Clayton, “but if that’s your decision, we’ll get on with it straight away.”

  “Decided, then! Oh, and I think Doctor rather than Professor.”

  “Dr. Roger Lloyd it is then.”

  “By the way,” Lloyd frowned, “any news about my brother?”

  “You’ll be the first to hear when there is, Jack – I mean Roger. It can’t be too long now before his body is discovered, and the hope is that, by then, you will be fully confident in your new personality. I suggest that you take on the role of Jack Barclay’s only relation – a cousin, and son of Jack Barclay’s aunt. That way you can have any surname you like, and a family resemblance will be only natural. You will also then be able to formally identify him, make the funeral arrangements, collect your old belongings from the flat, and visit the laboratory to collect his – your – old papers. But you must be fully confident by then, as you will be very much in the public gaze and we can’t afford any slips.”

  Lloyd looked concerned. “I obviously have a lot of work to do before I can really start a new life, but that’s what I want to do. I know what I want to do for a living as well, and I wondered if Sir Robin Algar might be able to help me with that.”

  “I’m sure he will,” replied Clayton. “We will all do everything we possibly can to help you on your way. I’ll get Sir Robin to ring you on the secure phone in a day or so.”

  ***

  Bill Clayton and Dusty Miller were getting on quite well. Miller had eventually stopped calling him Colonel, and had been to dinner with them a couple of times since he had first renewed acquaintances with Clayton’s wife, Catherine. He’d also been persuaded to stop calling her ‘The Cat’, as she had been known when they had served together in the SAS.

  But the fact was that Miller was getting bored. The more he talked about the old days, the more he yearned to get back on active operations. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed his time with Section 11, short though it had been so far. He’d learned a lot about operations in an urban environment. Most of his experience of Close Combat Surveillance, as the military liked to call it, had been hidden in a ditch or from behind a sand-dune, which he judged to be much easier than from a motorbike or van parked in Acacia Avenue or wherever. But after Jarvis had been killed, there had been little left for him to do that he had considered worthwhile.

  For his part, Head of Section 11 was very keen to keep him in the team. Clayton had done his best to find things for him to do, but with Dmitry Makienko assumed to be back home in Moscow, there hadn’t been a lot on offer apart from a few bits of low-level support on other operations. Bill Clayton knew Miller was keen to get a new posting abroad, if possible to Afghanistan, where he could start doing some ‘real’ work again.

  In an effort as much as anything to keep Miller occupied, Clayton had taken him with him on a couple of visits to Buscot Park, to see how Barclay was getting on.

  “You don’t mean Buscot Park down in the Cotswolds somewhere?” asked an incredulous Miller when the first visit was suggested.

  “That’s the place. Do you know it?”

  “Know it? I should say I do. But what’s Professor Barclay doing there?”

  “We use it as a safe house when we need to, and for all sorts of activities like specialist language training and so on. But he’s there because it’s a secret location, not listed as a military or civil service building, so he can be given his new identity there, well out of harm’s way.”

  “I’ll be damned!” exclaimed Miller, shaking his head. “You won’t believe this, but that’s where I first met the ‘Cat’ – I mean, Catherine.”

  “I didn’t know she’d been there!” Now it was Clayton’s turn to be surprised. “Why were you there?”

  “We were doing a course together.”

  “What sort of course?”

  Miller looked embarrassed.

  “If you must know, it was a Joint Services course on Interrogation and Resistance Techniques. Not just how to interrogate captured enemy, either, but more especially about how to resist their attempts to get you to talk if you were caught. Not at all pleasant, to be honest. But it’s how your wife survived Iraq, and got home. I told you she was tough. The training course itself nearly broke me, I don’t mind telling you.”

  “I had no idea,” said Clayton.

  “Rule 6,” mused Miller. “Never forget what a small world it is.”

  “Would you rather not come with me?”

  There was only the slightest hesitation.

  “Of course I’ll come with you. But not all the memories it will bring back will be happy ones, by any means.”

  Miller was very quiet when they first went down to visit. He had looked around, almost nervously, on arrival.

  “They wanted me to come back here as an instructor, you know, but at the time, I couldn’t do it.”


  Clayton understood.

  “And now?”

  “Perhaps. I rather fancy going abroad again, but if that doesn’t come up – well, perhaps here, then.”

  “And I’d rather you stayed with my Section,” said Clayton. “If you worked here, though, I could call you up now and then. I have a bunch of chaps who act as reserves for emergencies, as you know. You could be on my reserve list. It would give you a break now and then.”

  “I’d certainly welcome that. Most of the instructors only did a short tour, anyway.”

  “I’ll have a word with General Pearson-Jones, if you like.”

  “About me going to Afghanistan?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “Thank you, Colonel. I’ll have to think about all this.”

  “Rule 99, Miller.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t call me Colonel!”

  ***

  Mr. Barclay had been no bother to his Battersea neighbours, so they said. Not noisy or anything, with the TV turned up like some. He kept himself to himself, and many people in the block had no real idea whether he was in or out, and even less of an idea what he did for a living. He hadn’t really been there often enough for them to get to know him, anyway.

  But a couple of the neighbours had complained recently. The people across the landing and the woman downstairs had all thought that there was something wrong with his drains, but couldn’t get any reply from the door when they rang the bell. There was no reply from his phone, either, but that could have been because they were dialling the wrong number. The only number they had was that of the previous owner of the flat. One of the neighbours had been to the newspaper shop on the corner to check, but it seemed that he didn’t have a newspaper. Funnily enough, the newspaper boy, who delivered to the flat opposite, had also mentioned that there was a bit of a pong on the landing, but the man in the shop had thought no more about it until someone from the police had called to see if he knew anything about Mr. Barclay.

  That was after they had broken down the front door to get in. They soon discovered that it wasn’t the drains, either.

  Police Constable Jimmy Cartwright did not have a strong stomach at the best of times, and it nearly gave up on him completely as he ventured in to the hallway. The stench was overpowering, and it didn’t need a degree in nuclear physics to work out that it was coming from the body stretched out on the kitchen floor.

  Cartwright and his colleague decided not to go any further into the flat, in case they disturbed vital evidence or something, and backed off to the front door to use their radio to summon the murder squad. While they waited, they closed what was left of the door, thus depriving inquisitive neighbours of a view of the scene inside.

  The boys from the murder squad didn’t take long to turn up, and arrived with a team of forensic scientists in white coats and masks, which they really needed, and rolls of blue and white striped tape to seal off the area.

  Two men in a British Telecom van parked down the road noticed the activity, and within minutes, Bill Clayton knew that Roger Barclay’s body had been found.

  ***

  Detective Sergeant Stan Wilberforce was in charge, and one glance was enough to tell him how Barclay had died. A man who apparently had never been good looking, now looked even worse. Mouth agape, open eyes staring at the ceiling, his head in a pool of now very congealed blood, he had a neat bullet hole drilled through his right temple. The exit hole near the other temple turned out not to be nearly so neat.

  Those not so fortunate as to have been issued with masks, clamped handkerchiefs over their faces to cover their nose and mouth, but it didn’t make a lot of difference. There was no real way of telling how long Barclay had been lying there, especially as it had been so damned hot in the last week or so, but no doubt the pathologist would be able to work that out. They stood around waiting, while the Scenes of Crime Officer took photos from every conceivable angle. Wilberforce beckoned to one of his assistants, Detective Constable Al Smyth.

  “Yes, Serg?”

  “Get hold of a vet, will you,” commanded Sergeant Wilberforce.

  “Pardon?”

  “A vet, man. Get hold of a vet.”

  “Where will I find a vet?” queried Smyth.

  “Try Yellow Pages,” suggested the Sergeant. “There’s one over there under the phone.” He pointed to a small table in the hall near where the front door had been.

  “And when I get hold of a vet?” asked the Constable.

  “Ask him about goldfish,” demanded Wilberforce.

  “Goldfish?”

  Smyth was now quite sure the stench had got the better of his boss.

  “Yes, bloody goldfish,” said the Sergeant, nodding towards the kitchen windowsill. “There’s a dead one floating in that bowl over there, and I want to know how long they can last in this heat without being fed.”

  The penny dropped. There could be a clue there somewhere. Eventually Smyth got hold of an expert on the phone.

  “About two weeks, the man says, perhaps three, depending on the water,” Smyth announced.

  “Water?”

  “Yes water,” replied Smyth. “It’s what they live in.”

  “Don’t try and be smart with me, lad,” said the Sergeant crossly. “What about the water?”

  “They need it for oxygen, so the man said,” reported Al Smyth, “and the warmer the water, the less oxygen there is in it. So it depends on the water, how much there is of it, how many other goldfish are sharing it and how warm it is. In the sort of summer we’re having, he reckons two weeks if they’re lucky, perhaps three.”

  “Right,” said Wilberforce. “That’ll have to do until the pathologist gets hold of this bloke. I wonder who he is?”

  “You boys can start looking around now if you like,” said the SOCO. “I’ve got all the pictures I need of the body, but I’ll hang around in case you want something else.”

  “Good,” said Wilberforce. “Start with that goldfish-bowl.”

  ***

  Detective Sergeant Stan Wilberforce had been with the murder squad twelve years or more now, and generally speaking was highly regarded by his superiors. He usually managed to come up with a solution to most of the crimes he tackled, and was sharp enough to know what to follow up and what to ignore, so he didn’t waste much time, either. It was usually the case that the more you discovered about the victim, the more likely it was that a motive for his or her untimely departure would become evident. He worked on the principle that if you could find a motive, then you could find the villain. Finding enough evidence to put the villain away was often not so easy, but at least you knew who you were after.

  But the Barclay case was somehow not going the way it should. Wilberforce had been on the case three days now, and he was getting nowhere, fast.

  He had decided to consult his governor, Detective Chief Inspector Harry Flower. He was another good detective, and Stan Wilberforce was sure that, between them, they could find a way through the apparent dead-end his team appeared to have reached.

  It was quite late in the evening, and they were in the DCI’s office, with a glass of Famous Grouse, and the bottle on the desk.

  “I’m getting nowhere,” admitted Wilberforce. “We’ve found the bullet, and forensic have run a quick check on it for matches, but have come up with nothing.”

  “So it could be a new weapon on the patch,” suggested Flower.

  “Looks that way at the moment,” agreed the Sergeant, “although we’re still checking, and Special Branch is getting help from Northern Ireland, just in case. It also looks as if it could be a weapon not often seen in this country, judging by the calibre.”

  “What about the crime scene,” asked the DCI.

  “Very odd, that is,” replied Wilberforce, getting the photographs out of his folder and spreading them on the desk in front of him. “Been over it with a toothcomb twice now, and not a trace of anything – no fingerprints other than a few
from the victim and what I believe to be those of the previous owner, no sign of a struggle, and even more strange, no sign of how the murderer got in to the flat in the first place.”

  “Breaking the door down may not have helped your search for clues,” said Flower.

  “If he did get in through the front door, he was either let in or had a key, that’s certain. And at the moment that seems the only solution.”

  “If Barclay knew the assassin, then that would explain why there was no struggle.”

  “Agreed,” said Wilberforce.

  “So what do we know about Barclay?” asked Harry Flower.

  “Not a lot, to be honest,” admitted the Sergeant, “although I’d guess he was some kind of scientist. The first thing we did was look for his diary, and go through the phone book and all that. No sign of any family, and there were only four names in his phone book. We’re paying them a visit. One’s in California. But that was all – no home phone number, no brothers or sisters, no old Christmas cards or letters in the desk, - nothing. And only junk mail on the mat, plus a couple of science magazines.”

  “What about phone bills?”

  “Nothing found – we’re checking with BT.”

  “Mobile? Surely he must have a mobile – everyone has a mobile these days.”

  “No sign of one,” said Wilberforce. “And no computer, either. Not even a laptop.”

  “Where did he work?” asked Flower.

  “Not a clue,” admitted Wilberforce. “We’ve found no pay slips, no tax returns, no business papers, - nothing. Not even a briefcase.”

  “It’s almost as if the man didn’t exist,” pondered Flower, sipping his scotch.

  “He doesn’t, now,” said the detective. “And nobody’s come looking for him either.”

  “Early days?” queried Flower. “You only found him three days ago, after all.”

  “But he’s been dead just over three weeks,” protested Wilberforce. “Someone somewhere must have noticed he’s not around any more.”

  “What about behaviour patterns?” asked his boss.

  “Haven’t been able to establish any, yet. None of the neighbours really knew him. Kept himself to himself, anyway, so they haven’t been a lot of help, but he didn’t seem to leave the flat or return at any regular times – not a nine-till-five job, so it seems. Seemed to be away quite a lot. We’re checking with the local travel agency, but they’re only a small outfit, and it’s taking them time to go through their records.”