The Longest Pleasure

by Douglas Clark

  “Tough on the mice,” grunted Green.

  “I don’t like doing it, but I’ve got to. We’ve not got to make a mistake and let a hitherto unknown disease get among us unsuspected-like.”

  “Are there any unknown diseases, sir?” asked Berger.

  “Well, I’d never heard of Legionnaire’s disease until a year or two ago, and as for lassa fever . . .” He spread his hands. “Imported from Africa, but unknown to us.”

  There were no more questions, so Masters shepherded his team away and back to the Yard.

  Chapter Four

  “Use my office,” said Masters to Green, “and have a bit of a brain-storming session for a few minutes.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to see Anderson. I want, if possible, to get him, somehow, to have an official warning issued.”

  “You heard what he said last night.”

  “We hadn’t discovered then that all the tins were of the strip-open variety. Now, at least, I can ask him to see that people don’t use food from tins like that unless they’ve had them in their homes for some time.”

  Green looked gloomy. “I’m with you, George, one hundred per cent, but I don’t reckon you’ll succeed.”

  “At least I’m going to try. If we can save another family . . .”

  “I know all the humanitarian arguments, but the police have no power to forbid people to buy or eat what they want.” He looked closely at Masters. “I’m sounding defeatist again, mate, when I should be urging you on. But, honestly, there’s something about this business that’s griping me. A little kid on holiday eats a bit of ham for tea and next day she’s dead and all her family are at death’s door. And before we know where we are there’ll be other little kids . . . they’re already there, in fact, lying helpless with . . . what is it, ocular palsy, paralysis of the throat and puking their little hearts out. This one is different, George. There’s been murder done already, but we’re out to prevent more murder. It’s not a nice little case where we’re given a body and somebody says ‘There it is. Find out who did it—in your own time.’ We haven’t got any time at our disposal and yet, because of the nature of the problem, we have to fanny about learning a lot of technical facts just to get ourselves into the picture. It’s a galling situation, George.”

  “Of course it is. Haven’t I said I’m worried?”

  Green nodded. “I’ll join the lads and start talking ideas.”

  “Try to get some reasonable course of action, Bill, but don’t restrain them. Any ideas, however fantastic, should be given an airing. I’ll join you shortly.”

  After Masters had reported on progress, he made his request to Anderson. Could the AC, somehow, arrange for the country to be warned not to use the strip-open cans of food?

  Anderson didn’t argue. “I’ll try,” he said. “At six o’clock this evening, there’s a TV interview with a doctor from the DHSS. If we could get him to use your discovery to emphasise that the danger lies in that particular type of can—he could use it to show that the authorities really are doing something—every news bulletin would pick it up and it would be noised abroad on radio and in the newspapers as well as on the screens.”

  “That should be good enough, sir. Redcoke needn’t be mentioned, nor need any specific product.”

  “Leave it with me. But just one question, George. If we put out a warning against the strip-cans, what’s to stop our murderer from contaminating other types of tins?”

  “Two things I think, sir. First, the strip-cans have the flap under which to hide a hole and any rubber solution he may use as a bung and second, the score marks for stripping the ribbon of tin are a weakness in the fabric which is ideal for piercing very carefully.”

  “Moller thinks that a minute hole made under a blob of liquid rubber will not admit air, does he?”

  “Not liquid rubber, sir. I don’t know the correct term for the state . . . not viscous exactly, not thixotropic either, but soft enough to shape with a knife . . . it will hold its own shape and hold a peak at the top like stiff meringue mixture, and then set like that.”

  “I see. Well, George, it appears you are getting somewhere. You think you know how the tins are contaminated and you are fairly certain your man is a scientist and a technician with laboratory resources. Right?”

  “Throw in some knowledge of the biological sciences as well, sir. A microbiologist or something of that sort.”

  “Could be a doctor of medicine.”

  “Perhaps, sir, but few, I would think, are technicians. Dentist perhaps. They have a knowledge of pathology and have to do dexterity work. But we’re on the right track, of that I feel sure.”

  “That’s good enough for me. What next?”

  “A number of mundane matters, sir.”

  “Mundane? You’ve cleared the decks for this one I hope. George?”

  “When I said mundane I meant more down-to-earth matters like motives and questioning stores about who buys what. But as for clearing the decks, sir, Green and I were not on call—nowhere near the top of the list—so we were separately engaged on general work. We’ll have to tie things up.”

  “Drop everything. Put all your files in the Commander’s office—both of you. I want this botulism business to be given absolute top priority.”

  “Right, sir.”

  “Have you set up an Incident Room?”

  “No, sir. There is no focal point to the case, as yet. I just can’t see checks and cross-checks paying off until we have narrowed down the area of search to more manageable proportions. Until some of the patients are well enough to give us some information as to where they bought their respective tins, we won’t even know which stores to look at. For instance, sir, if the people who were camping in Somerset stocked up with food before setting out for their holiday, their tin of ham could have been bought in a town the other end of the country, so I don’t want to waste time in Taunton.”

  “I see your point, George, but keep a careful file. We want to be able to tie up the bits and pieces.”

  Masters grinned. Anderson continued: “And don’t smirk like that, George. Your usual files are more noteworthy for their brevity and slimness than their comprehensiveness. This time everybody will want everything.”

  Masters got to his feet. “I’ll see to it, sir.”

  When he reached his office, Reed was talking.

  “There’s got to be a motive. Even nutters have motives that seem reasonable to themselves, if not to anybody else.”

  “Go on,” said Masters, crossing to his chair. “Don’t let me stop you.”

  “Well, Chief, all I’m asking is, what is our chap aiming to do? He can’t be going for the people who have now got the disease, because he won’t know any of them—or if he does, it’s going to be a hell of a coincidence.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Berger. “If he put one of his tins in his local store, it could be that one of his neighbours would buy it a couple of minutes later.”

  “Hold it,” said Green. “We don’t know where any of the patients come from. We know the Burnham family were on a camping holiday, so we assume they came from somewhere outside Somerset. But we don’t know anything about the people in the Colchester and Derby hospitals. Do they live in those areas? Or are they on holiday, too, away from home? If they are it could be that they all got their provisions at the same shop.”

  “That would be a turn up for the book.”

  “Maybe, lad. But it’s a possibility.”

  “It’s something we have to resolve,” said Masters. “Make a note, Reed. Phone all three hospitals or the local nicks and get the names and addresses of every botulism patient. Then we can think about that particular point with some information to go on.”

  “Right,” said Green. “Sarn’t Reed was talking about motive. He doesn’t reckon the object of this exercise was to kill off the people . . .”

  “It was,” said Reed.

  “You just said it wasn’t, lad.”

/>   “Not the primary object perhaps and not necessarily those specific people. But I do reckon our nutter set out to kill a number of people, no matter who they were . . .”

  “Why?” asked Berger.

  “To get at Redcokes.” replied Reed.

  “You mean,” asked Masters, “that the primary target in this man’s mind was Redcoke Stores?”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “So his motive was what? To square some grievance with the owners of Redcoke?”

  “I reckon so, Chief.”

  “You sound very positive.”

  “Why would he make a point of buying his tins from Redcoke Stores, if Redcoke wasn’t to be his victim?”

  “Because it was his local shop,” said Berger.

  “And then he travelled round the country leaving them in other Redcoke stores? No, mate. A bloke as clever as this wouldn’t foul his own nest. He wouldn’t go to any of his own local shops where he could be well known, if not to the shopkeepers, at any rate to chance customers. He’d travel, this boyo. And after travelling, he made for the Redcoke store in the town he’d stopped at to buy his tins.”

  “Why Redcokes? Why not Sainsbury’s or Tesco’s or the International?” asked Berger.

  “That’s my point. The others are all there, but he went to Redcokes.”

  “He just happened to hit on Redcokes. He wanted a big chain that had branches all over the country so he could drop his doctored tins anywhere he felt like it. Any chain would have suited his purpose.”

  Reed scratched his head, and Green said: “Come on, lad. You started this motive lark. Young Berger is tying you up in knots.”

  “Look,” said Reed desperately. “The nutter was not out to kill specific people. We know that, because the method he chose was definitely non-specific. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “But killing these people had to serve some specific purpose. Right?”

  “We’ll agree on that for the moment.”

  “Thanks. Well, what other specific objective is there? If not the people, it must be the Redcoke chain of stores. He’s got it in for them for some reason.” Reed looked across at Green. “That’s my argument.”

  “Bloody good, too,” said Green. “When you arrived at it.” He turned to Berger. “Have you got anything to support that instead of shooting it down?”

  “Only that I’m more convinced than I was.”

  “That’s summat.” Green turned to Masters. “George?”

  “For what it’s worth at the moment, I’ll back Reed. And I’ll tell you why. Dr Moller gave it as his opinion that the nutter would try to contaminate a lot of tins—we actually mentioned a hundred, remember—and would fail with most of them. Now I reckon that a chap who is going to buy up a hundred tins to doctor isn’t going to get them all from the same place.”

  “Obvious,” growled Green.

  “And I can’t see why he should get them from the same chain either, unless he had to.”

  “Go on, Chief,” said Reed.

  “If he wasn’t particular, he would buy his tins from several stores in smaller lots. Those tins he successfully managed to contaminate would then be returned to branches of the store from which they were bought. This would have to happen, not only because the different chains sell different brands in many cases, but because the price labels usually carry the name of the store.”

  “A price label wouldn’t matter, Chief. He could remove them. You often find the odd tin not priced.”

  Masters shook his head. “Sorry, Berger, but I won’t buy that—although what you say is true about missing price tags.”

  “Why not, Chief?”

  “Simply because an unpriced article at check-out becomes the object of scrutiny. We’ve all experienced it. The girl on the till looks at every face of the tin, searching for the missing label. Our man would, I suggest, prefer not to have his handiwork examined, no matter how carefully he had done his stuff. He would much rather it was nonchalantly pushed along the counter without a second glance.”

  “True,” said Green. “And there’s another thing I should tell you in this connection. My missus won’t take a tin or packet that isn’t priced. I’ve seen her put an unpriced one back and take another that is priced. And if my missus does that, I’d like to bet there’s thousands of other women who do the same thing, so’s they’re not overcharged at the till.”

  “Good point,” said Masters. “I’m positive our man would want his doctored goods to look as normal as possible—for all the reasons stated. So, to get back to my support for Reed’s contention that the prime target is Redcoke. If our chap bought a great many tins from various chains, it would strike me as odd that all his few successes were with tins that came from one chain only.” He held up his hand to forestall interruptions. “I would accept that oddity if all his successes were with one particular type of tin from one particular chain. But I cannot accept it when his successes come from different types of tin all from the same chain. Therefore I believe all his tins came from Redcoke stores and since he made a point of getting them all from Redcoke stores, he had a good reason for doing so. And that reason, I submit, like Reed, leads me to believe that Redcoke was intended to be his prime victim.”

  Green rubbed his pudgy nose with one finger, and said apologetically: “George, I didn’t do any of the thought processes, but I arrived at the same answer. I just assumed Chummy was out to clobber Redcoke.”

  “It as obvious as that?”

  “To me, yes.”

  “I’m not going to knock your flashes of inspirational genius.”

  “No . . .”

  “Something is worrying you.”

  “I’m not sure either of us is right.”

  “Neither am I, but we have to start somewhere, and at least we have a basis—arrived at both by inspiration and logic—for action. We’ll soon know if we’re wrong, and quite honestly, Bill, we’ve got to do something. Moreover, we would have to test all possibilities, and Redcoke would figure among those anyway. All we’ve done is to decide to give them high priority.”

  “With no alternatives,” said Berger wryly.

  Masters looked across at him. “There are, you know: conjectural ones—even highly speculative. But we can’t move until we get facts. You touched on one of them—what if all the patients shopped in the same store? Is our man out to get a number of local people or just to do the dirt on that one store or, say, its manager?” Masters spread his hands. “Go even further. We all refer to Mister Botulism as a nutter. A crank, in other words. He’s poisoned meats only, so far. What if he’s a raving vegetarian trying to drive people away from ham or beef? Or one of those people who want to stop us slaughtering animals for food? Or . . .”

  “Don’t go on,” begged Green. “The lads get the picture and my belly’s beginning to think my throat’s cut. I’m that hungry I could eat a dish of sheeps’ eyeballs.”

  “Without batting an eyelid,” murmured Berger.

  “At least they don’t can them,” said Green.

  Masters got to his feet. “Be back here as soon as you can. There’s work to be done.”

  *

  They re-assembled within three-quarters of an hour. Reed and Berger had eaten fish and chips in their canteen. Masters and Green had chosen bread and cheese and a pint of beer in a nearby pub.

  “I had calls put through to the three nicks, Chief. We’ve got the answers.”

  “What are they?”

  “Mr and Mrs Burnham live in Ewell in Surrey, and they bought their tinned food in Kingston before going on holiday. They have two—had two—kids, as you know.

  “Mr and Mrs Oliver live in Colchester and they shopped there. They are the only two affected there.

  “Mr and Mrs Seymour live in Derby and shop there. But there are four of them ill. Mr and Mrs Geary had a meal with them. Mrs Geary is their daughter.”

  “Thank you. That means that our man operates over a wide area and so we can rule out any ideas we ma
y have had that he was hoping to affect any particular group of local people, or to harm one particular Redcoke store or its manager.”

  Green grunted his agreement. Masters packed his pipe as he continued. “The head office of Redcoke Stores is here in London. I know very little about their operation, but I’m of the impression that they have spread their wings—in common with all other supermarket chains—over the past few years. Nor am I a business man knowing much about property deals. But again I’m of the impression that there’s a lot of wheeling and dealing over the acquisition of prime sites for even bigger big shops. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that some small-property owners have been treated in a manner which they may consider to be less than just during the arranging of some of these deals.”

  “That’s about the strength of it,” conceded Green. “There’s a lot of duck-shoving in the property market. Tenants booted out of their homes and businesses so that the landlord can get a good price for vacant possession. That sort of thing.”

  “It seems a fruitful area for investigation. So I want us to seek the help of the Redcoke head office . . .”

  “To expose any crooked property deals they’ve been involved in?” asked Green scornfully. “You’ll get as much joy out of that as a Hottentot gets from a witchdoctor’s curse.”

  “You’ll manage, Bill.”

  “Me? I see. The tricky bit is being left to me, is it?”

  “You’ll manage. All that has to be done is to ask them for the addresses of all their new supermarkets for the last five years. Then . . .”