Killer in the Shade Page 10

  Hazard said, ‘You think it would work this way — Vince was selling information about the gang at Thaxstead High Barn to Clayson, who was passing it back to the Weddons?’

  ‘I’m not sure of ‘would’, Bill. But I’ll accept ‘could’. It could work that way, but if it did I can’t see a reason why they’d want it except blackmail. These power-cut robberies have been putting a lot of money in the wrong pockets.’ Drury again gave his attention to Rollo. ‘Didn’t they refer to Peel at all?’

  ‘Not by name. They mentioned H.P. in their cross-talk, but it didn’t mean anything and I didn’t pay much attention. I was trying to dream up a way of getting the hell out of that place. The way the woman held that gun was adding years to my life in a matter of minutes.’

  Rollo rubbed out the end of his cigarette against some dead silver birch leaves.

  ‘But when Weddon,’ he went on, ‘said something about H.P. having joined the A.A. too late, he suddenly registered. H.P. was Peel and A.A. wasn’t the Automobile Association, it was that missing plastic surgeon, Anthony Arbuthnot.’

  ‘You can’t remember how he spoke about H.P.?’ Drury pressed.

  ‘No, that’s the devil of it. I hadn’t been paying attention. Much of the cross-talk meant nothing to me.’

  ‘Blackmail,’ said Drury, nodding. ‘I think so. It fits. Clayson, the man whose evidence put Peel in jail, was keeping tabs on him now he was out, and doing so through Vince Pallard. What he learned he passed on to the woman, for a price or a favour or both. Peel got to the truth through Pallard and then Vince was out for keeps. After he had eliminated Vic Clayson.’ The Yard man’s tone became introspective again as he added, ‘I also think you’ve given us a clue to why you were told you could write up what you knew. That wasn’t altogether a bluff, but what you might have put down wasn’t intended for the Gazette. More likely for the Weddons. You would have been told a story that would have involved them and got Peel clear of something he couldn’t handle — or perhaps he could. Perhaps he just could,’ Drury repeated softly. ‘He might have been trying his own blackmail, which is why the National City raid is laid on. Yes, it could be. I thought that was too much for real coincidence.’

  He saw Rollo looking at him without a gleam of understanding in a very perplexed gaze.

  ‘I don’t make sense to you?’

  ‘I don’t know, Superintendent,’ Rollo said honestly. ‘I don’t know enough to be able to make up my mind. But you said I’d given you a clue to why I was told I’d be able to write up what I knew. Well, there might have been another reason than the one you’ve worked out.’

  ‘Yes?’ Drury frowned, moving his head so that he looked sideways at the man below him.

  ‘I told them about Pallard being shot and my fingerprints being left on the murder gun.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was desperately trying to give them a reason for not shooting me out of hand, especially as that damned redhead looked as though she’d thoroughly enjoy putting a hole in my head. Maybe I wasn’t being clever and detached, but I felt too damned involved, and I grabbed at one straw within reach, as I thought. I thought if I told them about the gun with my fingerprints they might feel they could take a chance on having me arrested for the shooting. But I wasn’t thinking clearly. I knew that when the woman said, ‘He’s mad’, she meant Peel. Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps he is mad.’

  No one spoke. Rollo grabbed a quick lungful of air he felt he needed.

  ‘Perhaps she’s right,’ he repeated. ‘Perhaps — ’

  Drury was shaking his head.

  Tom Moore drove Rollo back to Fleet Street. Dan Simpson had left, but Joe Murphy was banging away at a typewriter. He stopped when he saw Rollo crossing the floor.

  ‘You look sick, boy,’ he said in no tone of sympathy.

  ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘You phoned Moore. How did he get you sick?’

  ‘By taking me into some fresh air and giving me artificial respiration.’

  ‘If he hadn’t?’

  ‘You might now be beating out a line for the obit. column.’

  The Irishman was an old hand at not allowing his interest to be trapped by obvious bait.

  ‘Sounds as though there just might be a story.’ He sat blinking slowly, registering heavy thinking. ‘There’d have been one for sure if Tom Moore hadn’t taken you into the fresh air, but left you — where?’

  The last word was uttered very softly. Rollo grinned back, and made to walk on.

  ‘Don’t be like that, boy,’ said Murphy. ‘Share. I’ve got something in exchange. Not just words, either. Something you can handle.’

  The wheedling voice was mere blarney, Rollo knew, but Joe Murphy wasn’t a liar. He had something and knew that Rollo would be interested.

  ‘Off the record, Mr Murphy.’

  ‘Joe. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Joe, then.’

  ‘That’s better, boy. We’re sitting on the same fence, and when we get off it we’ll come down on the same side. Know what that makes us? Pals, boy. So give forth, pal.’

  ‘Still off the record.’

  ‘Of course.’ Murphy grinned like a ferret sniffing a rabbit. ‘Besides, I can’t afford to jump before I’ve got clearance from friend Drury. So you’re safe, boy.’

  Rollo perched on the corner of the Irishman’s scarred desk. The typewriter with its sheet of half-filled paper was pushed aside.

  He gave a brief account of what had happened to him since he left the office. Joe Murphy said nothing when he had finished. The Irishman looked extremely sober — for him. He felt in a drawer and drew out a telegram, and as he handed it to Rollo he said, ‘You know something, boy? For a nice, well-brought-up youngster you keep the worst company of any nice boy I know. How the hell do you manage it?’

  But he didn’t get an answer.

  Rollo was reading the telegram, which was addressed to him at the Morning Gazette. The telegram had been dispatched early in the afternoon from a post-office in South-west London. The message consisted of five words and was unsigned. It read: ‘I shall keep my word.’

  Rollo had no difficulty in deciding who had sent it, nor had Joe Murphy when he took it from the younger man’s hand. But what the Irishman couldn’t decide was what the words meant. Rollo knew at once.

  The raid on the National City Bank was very much on.

  Chapter 8

  The idea came to Frank Drury as he sucked his cold pipe and shook his head at Rollo after the young man had suggested Peel might be insane, as Beryl Weddon had declared. He replaced the pipe with a cigarette as he watched Tom Moore and Rollo walk through the garden gate.

  ‘Bill,’ he said to Hazard, ‘I want this place watched. We can switch the man we put on to Melanie Smallwood. It doesn’t look as though there will be an attempt to get at her. The chances are the Weddons won’t come back and they were ready to skip at short notice. I then want the chief security officer of the National City Bank to ring me at the Yard. Go and lay that on while I finish this cigarette. I always begin one hoping I’ll enjoy it and I never do.’

  While Hazard used the radio telephone in the police car, Drury walked up and down the garden working at the problem he had given himself. He looked into the double garage, collected the ignition key of the mustard-coloured Jensen that had almost brought death to Rollo, and continued his walk round the garden, taking in the bare state of the flower-beds and the leaf-littered lawn and even the interest being taken in him by someone in the house next door, who was watching him from between curtains that did not quite cover the upstairs bedroom window.

  Hazard came back.

  ‘It’ll take half an hour for the switch,’ he reported. ‘The bank security man you want is named Barrett. I thought you’d want to brief the chap who takes over here, so I said to get Barrett to ring you at the Yard in a couple of hours. We should be back by then.’

  ‘Thanks, Bill.’

  They fell in step and walked out into the street, went
to the police car and sat in it, smoking and talking, until a grey mini turned into the street and began crawling down the other side.

  Drury climbed out. ‘Drive up beyond him. Bill,’ he told Hazard. ‘No need to make this look like a TV police raid.’

  He walked along the pavement towards the grey mini. Six minutes later he joined Hazard again, who was parked at the far end of the road.

  ‘We might even have time to snatch a quick pint before we get back,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘Depends on how you make out bucking the rush hour, Bill.’

  Dick Barrett was another ex-Yard man, who had retired to join a mobile security car service that had worked for the National City Bank Group, which had offered him the post of internal chief security officer, one he had filled with distinction. But Dick Barrett was a worried man when he got through to Drury’s office.

  ‘I won’t disguise the fact your call’s got me anxious, Superintendent,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve every reason to feel anxious,’ Drury told him, ‘if I’m not a damned bad guesser. But I can’t talk on the phone. Where do you suggest?’

  Barrett knew the score. He suggested at once, ‘How about here, at my home? Bill Hazard still with you? Well, we can manage a meal of sorts. It’ll take time, won’t it?’

  He was still sounding anxious.

  ‘I’m afraid so. But I can give you a clue. Before I arrive, have ready anything you can tell me that’s — let’s say unusual about your branch at Upper Borley.’

  Drury heard the other man’s swift intake of breath. When he hung up he turned to his assistant, who had a slip of paper in his hand containing a message he had taken on the other phone.

  ‘I got some sort of reaction, Bill.’

  ‘This could be another,’ Hazard told him, reading from the paper in his hand. ‘Hackley wants you to ring him at the doctor’s number. He’s been trying to get you since he got back to Fleet Street. Sounds like more news.’

  ‘Get through, Bill. After that we’re going to Barrett’s and we shan’t starve. He’s laying on some grub. I’d better let my wife know it’ll be another late night.’

  When they arrived at Barrett’s home on the outskirts of Croydon the bank security chief did his best to act as though the visit was a social occasion, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  ‘We’ll eat first,’ he told Drury, ‘since my wife insisted you’ll be starving and she’s the only one who knows how her fancy oven works. But I’ll tell you something. You’ve got me on tenterhooks about Upper Borley.’

  Mrs Barrett proved to be a pleasant middle-aged woman with a fine pair of dark eyes and a trim figure, who must have been exceptionally good-looking when Dick Barrett married her. She talked about her married son, who lived in Leeds and worked in the research lab of a woollen firm. He was married to a girl who was a teacher in a comprehensive school and was writing a book. Mary Barrett kept the conversation going without too much effort and the meal, largely because of her sense of a hostess’s duty, was less of a strain than the look on her husband’s face seemed to suggest.

  When he had emptied the coffee-pot she rose and said, ‘Now you men go into the lounge and leave me to clear away, and if you want more coffee I can easily make some.’

  As the three men selected chairs in the lounge Bill Hazard broke the ice by saying, ‘You don’t have a daughter, Mr Barrett, who takes after her mother?’

  Barrett was another pipe smoker. He offered a tin of his favourite smoking mixture to Drury and pushed a box of cigarettes towards Hazard.

  ‘Just the one boy, Inspector,’ he grinned, ‘and he proved a handful till he left college. Then he settled down like a broody hen on a nest. Now he’s doing fine.’ He took the tin from Drury after the superintendent had filled his pipe. ‘To get to the point, may I know how you learned of the intended delivery at the Upper Borley branch? It was supposed to be secret.’

  Drury took his pipe from his mouth, blew smoke at his knees.

  ‘It still is as far as I’m concerned,’ he told the other. ‘You’d better listen to something that isn’t to go beyond you, Barrett. I’m here because I think we should co-operate. That way we might both miss at least one headache each.’

  He went on to explain in part his reason for believing there was to be a raid on a branch of the National City Bank.

  ‘First,’ he said, ‘I thought it might be head office, but I scrubbed that because I’m sure this mob I’m interested in aren’t geared for a tricky rififfi job. It’ll be startling, but not on that scale. Then it came to me — maybe the Upper Borley branch.’

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ Barrett broke in, still on edge. ‘How you decided on that branch.’

  Drury didn’t answer at once. He smoked his pipe like a man trying to relax but not quite succeeding.

  He said, ‘My main reason, apart from what I’ve just told you, Barrett, is that I don’t believe the manager will return to the Upper Borley branch tomorrow.’

  ‘Something’s happened to him?’

  ‘Let’s say, if I have any say in the matter, something will happen to him,’ Drury said enigmatically.

  ‘You can’t enlarge?’

  ‘I’d rather not at the moment.’ Drury sounded cautious. ‘I’d have to take it up with the Assistant Commissioner first.’

  ‘Like that, huh?’

  ‘Even more than you think, Barrett.’ Drury wasn’t in a hurry to put the question that mattered. He wanted Barrett to get the weight of the problem without knowing what it entailed. Finally, he said, ‘Now what’s so special about that particular branch?’

  Dick Barrett’s eyes pinched together under the dark heavy brows given emphasis by the balding hair above them. The remains of a summer suntan left the top of his head looking sallow, the lower half pale, and with his lean features this gave him the appearance, in Bill Hazard’s critical eyes, of looking like a rooster who had been in a barnyard barney.

  ‘To put you in the picture, Superintendent, I’ve got to explain some company policy.’ Barrett put down his pipe, rested elbows on his chair-arms and clasped his hands over his chest. Hazard decided he looked even more like a rooster that had lost a fight. ‘After the Great Train Robbery some of the directors became restive about the bank’s involvement in returning old Treasury notes. Then there was that business at Purley, where a Hampshire security van was attacked in a lay-by and looted. The critics at head office felt their point had been made. You follow?’

  Drury nodded assent. ‘Go on, Barrett. I’m with you.’

  ‘They pointed out that the risk was in making for Central London, so what was wanted was decentralization. They wanted returned money to be kept away from Central London until the last moment. It should be returned to a branch in the London suburbs. Secretly, without fuss, so that no one would suspect a large sum of old notes being left at a branch overnight.’

  ‘Overnight?’ Drury said quickly.

  ‘Yes, that’s all. The next day the money would be escorted into Central London in a carefully staged convoy of private Q cars and vans. That couldn’t be done all the way from the provinces. Sooner or later the process would give itself away. But on the short run to Central London from the suburbs in the rush hour it would be different.’

  ‘In the rush hour,’ Drury nodded. ‘Yes, that would cut the speed.’ He seemed to perk up and grinned. ‘Now you’re going to tell me the system works.’

  ‘We’ve used it four times in the past eighteen months. And it works,’ Barrett said. ‘At least, it has up to now.’

  ‘The Upper Borley branch is next to take such a delivery, that right?’

  Barrett nodded. ‘Tomorrow. The day after the convoy is laid on to take the returns to head office. After that it’s the responsibility of the Bank of England, who collect from them.’

  ‘Thank God it’s not tomorrow and the stuff isn’t held at Upper Borley tonight,’ Drury said.

  Barrett’s glum expression didn’t lift. ‘It was to have been held there ton
ight after having been delivered today,’ he told Drury in a heavy voice. ‘But I altered the dates at the last moment.’

  Both Yard men were staring at him. ‘In God’s name, why?’ Drury asked, pushing forward in his chair.

  ‘At the request of the branch manager, Cecil Weddon. He said it would be much more convenient for his staff to have the delivery a day later.’

  ‘Was that difficult to do?’

  ‘Not difficult, but it meant getting on to a number of people, and these delays are always — well, a strain, you know.’

  ‘I know only too well,’ Drury agreed quietly.

  ‘We’ve never before had a request for delay after arrangements have been made, agreed, and fixed. So this change was unusual and totally unexpected.’

  ‘But you agreed to it?’

  ‘What else could we do? The branch manager has to accept responsibility while the stuff’s in his bank vault, usually a compartment with a door opened by a key. The arrangement has to accommodate him.’

  ‘You could shift to another branch.’

  ‘For a delay of only twenty-four hours?’ Barrett shook his head. ‘That was where it became tricky.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Drury assured him. ‘How much is being moved and from where?’

  ‘Just over two hundred thousand collected from the West Country branches.’

  ‘Would make a nice haul. How much is it insured for?’

  A mask seemed to drop over the security man’s face. ‘I’m the security officer,’ he reminded Drury. ‘I’m not involved in the office work.’

  They stared at each other. Bill Hazard eased his collar. The lounge seemed to be getting warmer.