The Bad Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  But, as he went through it all again and again—he could hear Lily down in the kitchen trotting about getting a cup of tea—no snag whatever came into his mind. It would not be the total answer. The conclusion he had imagined for it was not going to see himself marching out of HQ with the blue folder neatly tucked under his arm and no one taking a blind bit of notice. Far from it. But it did seem to be a chance of discovering exactly where that folder was. And just perhaps more.

  So, as soon as he had arrived at the CID Room he booked himself out ‘on inquiries’ and drove up to Palmerston Park. Important to get there in good time, if he wanted to be sure of catching old Mac at his desk. Because at precisely two minutes to eleven Mac—he’d been doing this for years—would come out of his room into the outer office, and give a minimal nod to the one civilian clerk allocated to Fraud Investigation. Then they would go out together, with Mac carefully locking the office door. Mac would stalk along next to the canteen, arriving precisely at eleven. There, sitting alone, he would drink one cup of coffee and—the big black lady, Mrs Alexander, the head cleaner at Headquarters who had once run the canteen at Abbotsport Police Station, had told him this—eat one single-portion packet of Scottish Petticoat Tail shortbread biscuits. Leaving the canteen at exactly thirteen minutes past eleven he would unlock the office, let his clerk back in and resume work at eleven fifteen on the dot.

  ‘Hey, man,’ Ma Alexander had said, ‘if ever those shortbread packets run out there’s big, big trouble. Mr Mac he don’t say nothing, but, man, the look he give you if you’re behind the counter. Freeze you up, more than any damn Abbotsport winter.’

  Plenty of excuses, of course, to visit Headquarters. Looking up something in the old records, finding out from Fingerprints whether some dabs lifted from somewhere were worth pursuing. A dozen reasons. And in any case no one was going to ask him what he was doing up there, once he had shown his warrant card at the main doors.

  But in his waking dream, as he had stretched out there half hearing Lily making the tea, a reason to visit Fraud Investigation Branch itself had come into his head. And a reason he would need. Though he had known Mac MacAllister for years, they were hardly bosom pals. Old Mac too dry and unforthcoming. A proper Scotchman. So no question of just popping into his office for a bit of a chat.

  And—not to put too fine a point on it—he had a nasty idea that somehow Mac knew about him. Knew that, from time to time, he ‘did something’. Nothing like definite evidence that he was on the take. But he had always had the feeling that Mac had some sort of an instinct. An idea that he was not exactly scrupulous when it came to being offered cash in hand. Being offered, or asking for it.

  No, spending a few moments in friendly banter was definitely not on.

  It was just before ten when he put the drowsy-thoughts plan finally into action.

  He poked his nose carefully round the Fraud Investigation Branch door. Mac’s clerk, an oldish black guy called, of all things, Horatio Bottomley, looked up from the keys of the computer his stubby fingers had been dancing across.

  ‘Mac in?’

  ‘When he ever out, Sergeant, ‘cept coffee break an’ tea break?’

  ‘Right you are.’

  He went across and pushed open the half-closed door of the inner office.

  ‘Hello there, Mac’

  Mac MacAllister looked up from his papers-covered desk where, just as expected, he was sitting hunched up like an old watchmaker.

  ‘Hello, Jack. Something I can do for you?’

  Not exactly welcoming. But he went right in and placed himself with his hands on the corner of the desk, leaning his weight on them.

  ‘No. Well, it’s what I can do for you, Mac, really. Nothing much, just something I think might interest you. But how are you?’

  ‘Canna complain.’

  ‘Going on holiday soon?’

  This was a bit naughty. It was a well-known thing that Mac MacAllister, wedded to poking about among his files and figures, deeply disliked taking his annual leave.

  Mac sighed.

  ‘Ah, weel, no. I canna go just yet. I’ve a mountain of work. You know, they’ve arrested that Councillor Symes fellow. Improper procedures at yon Fisheries Development Authority. I’ve all that to look into. That is, once someone’s located an FDA technical manager, former technical manager I should say. And those papers won’t be dealt with in five minutes.’

  ‘Former technical manager?’ Jack asked, spinning things out as hard as he could now that Mac had begun - piece of luck—to talk precisely about the seized Symes files. ‘What’s a former technical manager got to do with anything?’

  ‘Ah, weel, it’s a terrible shame. You see, apparently that fellow—he goes by the name of Turner, so they tell me—went to the top man at the FDA some months ago protesting that Arthur Symes was overriding his decisions. As he may well have been. With the unprincipled object of giving some wee contract to a person or persons who had offered a corrupt inducement.’

  ‘So?’

  Had Mac at those words corrupt inducement shot him a quick, assessing glance? No, seemed to be all right. For once.

  ‘Weel now, what d’ye think happened?’

  ‘Search me.’

  ‘Our technical manager laddie got just precisely nowhere. I don’t doubt friend Symes managed to put in a bad word about him somehow or another.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Why, then yon brave Mr Turner decided the Fisheries Development Authority and Abbotsport itself was no place for the like of him. Nor the real world at all. So off he went to be what the papers call a New Age traveller. Going about the country in some broken-down vehicle or other, living the righteous life without any nasty money, except for the generous provisions of National Assistance.’

  And - I get it - no bugger can find him now to give evidence against old Symesy.’

  ‘Aye, they’re looking, but they’re no’ finding.’

  Jack could hardly believe his luck. As long as Mr Turner could not be laid hands on, the Symes papers were almost certain to lie where they were untouched. The blue folder that would bring him and Lily a life of ease on that island of hers would be there for the taking for weeks to come.

  As much to hide the grin he felt beginning to force its way on to his face as to establish himself more solidly in Mac’s office he swung round and perched one buttock on the corner of the desk.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘it’s actually about that same Symes business I came to see you.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’

  ‘Yep. What you might call another aspect. Sort of coincidence. I was round at Symes’s house a few weeks back. When he was on the other side of the fence, making a meal out of calling in the law because someone had done his place.’

  ‘And …?’

  Mac’s eyes were straying back to the document in front of him.

  And so far, though he had learnt that he would at least have the full amount of time Emslie Warnaby had allowed him to get hold of the file, he had not really got any nearer seeing how that might be done.

  The glistening rails of his morning daydream beginning to get a bit buckled?

  ‘Yeah,’ he said hastily. ‘It was like this. Old Symes was creating about all his valuable family heirlooms being nicked, three china budgies, the lot, and, just as he came to tell me about his wife’s jewellery, in she came. Bit of all right, too. God knows how a poncy git like Symes came to get hold—’

  ‘I heard something about that break-in,’ Mac interrupted, once again glancing towards the rows of figures on the sheet in front of him. ‘Jinkie Morrison, wasn’t it? Not much detecting needed there, if what I heard’s right. His MO stamped all over the place.’

  Jack felt a flush of uneasiness. How much had Mac actually heard? Could he possibly know, or have guessed, that it had been as near as damn it that he had accepted that half-baked alibi of Jinkie’s? And its price.

  ‘Yeah, it was Jinkie. Got him bang to rights next day.’ He attempted a laugh.
‘Silly old idiot actually tried to swing an alibi on me. Watching TV, would you believe?’

  ‘Oh, aye?’

  Mac said no more. But there had been a note of definite suspicion in the stretched-out vowel of that aye.

  Quickly he went back to what he had noticed when Raymonde Symes had come in that night.

  ‘Yeah, well, look, this is what I dropped in to tell you. When old Symes mentioned a necklace he had given that luscious wife of his to get her to agree to let him have his filthy way with her—’

  ‘Jack, I just havna time to listen to suppositions anent Councillor Symes’s love life.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, sorry, Mac. No, but the thing was, no sooner had Symes mentioned the necklace that the lovely—No sooner had he mentioned the necklace than his missus chimes in with it’s diamonds and worth every penny of ten thousand. And what does old Symes yack out? No, no, you’ve got it all wrong, not worth anything like that much, women have got no head for figures, blah, blah, blah. So what d’you think, Mac? Piece of yum-yum like our Raymonde would never have agreed to marry someone like Symes, not unless he came up with a really big offer, cash or jewels, right? So, at the time they were married, which was about five years ago, one Arthur Symes, no more than a purchasing officer at the Fisheries Development place was able to lay his hands on ten thousand nicker so as to—Here, this is good. So as to be able to lay his hands on the luscious Raymonde.’

  Mac MacAllister looked up at him.

  ‘Aye, you may be on to something there, Jack. You’re right. Thanks for the information. When they find Mr New Age Turner and I get round to examining the Symes figures, I’ll know what to watch out for. Thanks.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  He took advantage of the slight thaw in the atmosphere to give a careless glance round Mac’s domain. Green-painted filing cabinets ranged along three of its walls. Dusty old cardboard boxes of finished-with papers, tied up and labelled, above them. A big trade calendar advertising a brand of mobile phone, the days below the glossy picture meticulously crossed off. And, behind him, a battered wooden cupboard, its doors an inch or two open and on its shelves, crammed in, a jumble of new-looking files and spring-lock boxes.

  Could they be …?

  ‘All that clobber come from the Fisheries Development place?’ he asked, swinging round and extending a casual foot in the direction of the cupboard.

  ‘Aye, that’s the stuff. I had to requisition that cupboard for it all. And look at the terrible old affair they dug up for me. Not even a key to it. But I had to put what they brought in somewhere. I dinna suppose one half of it’ll be any use. Those fellows who made the arrest had no idea at all. Took hold of anything that looked like a wee piece of paper for fear they’d be in trouble for missing something.’

  He gave another massive sigh.

  Jack sat where he was on the corner of the desk, staring at the crammed shelves behind the cupboard’s leaning open doors. And, after a moment, he saw - he was certain of it - jammed between two other files just the edge of a slim folder. Coloured pale blue.

  Chapter Seven

  Mac MacAllister had seen him looking for longer than he really ought to have done at that doors-apart crammed old wooden cupboard. But, mistrustful though he was, it seemed as if he had read nothing into the deep, far-away stare the sight of that actual pale blue folder had betrayed him into.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Mac had abstractedly answered his query about what the contents of the cupboard were, ‘every file in that cupboard, every last paper, will have to be gone over, checked and re-checked, before I get away for my holiday. I’ve got DI Cutts hovering over me, you know.’

  Oh, no, you haven’t, Jack thought, pulling himself together.

  Detective Inspector Cutts - ‘Noble’ Cutts as the youngsters in the force had taken to calling him when his willingness to ‘improve’ evidence, the so-called ‘noble corruption’, had got him relegated to Admin - would not stir himself an inch to urge on the investigation into the Symes case. He would have no need to. Once Mac had taken up the documents he would grind away at the figures till they had been added up, subtracted, multiplied and divided and the last trickery involved had come to light. In plain fact, he could take his due leave at any time, come back refreshed and get down to it all again. But with the fine excuse of the files from the Fisheries Development Authority waiting to be opened up he would never forgo his eleven o’clock ration of Petticoat Tail shortbreads, not even for a single day.

  No, Jack said to himself with a thump of gloom, the bugger’ll be here just as he is now, carefully locking his door each time he sets foot outside it, for weeks and weeks to come.

  But if … If that mass of stuff in the cupboard doesn’t get hoisted up to the desk to be looked at … If that FDA technical officer stays missing … Then … Then there’s always the hope I’ll somehow work out a way of lifting that folder - God, yes, that can only be the one, that bloody blue colour—right from under old Mac’s sharp eyes. Somehow.

  God knows how, though.

  Mac looked up from the document he had already gone back to examining.

  ‘Ah, weel, be seeing you, Jack.’

  In other words, Get out from under my feet.

  ‘See you, Mac’

  But when the hell will I get to see that folder in that specially requisitioned old cupboard of yours?

  For the next three days it seemed to Jack he did little but think of possible ways of getting at the blue folder without Mac MacAllister knowing. If, he thought, he could slip into the Fraud Investigation inner office for even just a minute while Mac was out, he could whip that slim file out of that grotty old cupboard without Mac ever realizing anything was missing. He had spotted the thin strip of pale blue jutting out between two ordinary files himself only because it was totally in his mind.

  But what chance was there of finding himself in the office without Mac’s ever-suspicious gaze fixed on him?

  Bloody none.

  The deeds to the Calm Seas Hotel, Ko Samui, the life that Lily wanted so much, it was all as far away as it had been before that phone call during their wedding anniversary meal. Svelte little Anna Foxton fixing up the secret meet with bloody Emslie Warnaby.

  What he had to get hold of and hand over to Warnaby before he got his reward—before Warnaby paid him his bribe, say it—was totally and absolutely out of his reach.

  Or …?

  It had taken him another whole day before he could bring solidly to mind the glimmer of a possible solution to his problem that he had begun to see. How to get into the Fraud Investigation offices without Mac knowing? Ridiculously simple first step: by going there when Mac was not present. Good and early in the morning. Well before nine when Mac and his clerk, the comically named Horatio Bottomley, arrived. Both of them always absolutely prompt.

  As soon as he had hit on this elementary piece of reasoning he realized that the next, seemingly impossible step, actually getting into Mac’s room, might even be in his grasp.

  Mrs Alexander. She and he had been on good terms for years, starting from her time as canteen lady at the main city police station. And, since she lived not far from his own place, even when she had moved on to become head of the cleaning staff up at Palmerston Park Headquarters he had kept up with her. Palmerston Park head cleaner. There she was now, with, of course, her own set of keys to every locked room there. Her work, and that of her fellow cleaners, had to be over before any of the top brass got in.

  So, Day One. Get up early, walk round to within sight of the bus-stop for Palmerston Park before the first bus rolled up. Double check the time on the notice in the bus-shelter. Retire to where he could watch without being seen.

  Reward, that very first morning: Mrs Alexander arriving at the stop a good ten minutes before the bus was due, worn beige coat firmly buttoned round her, shapeless reddish hat well jammed down on her head, green-and-yellow check umbrella under one arm. He watched then as she tugged her heavy purse from her coat pocket and took out the mone
y for her fare. At last the bus, all of five minutes late, appeared. He stayed where he was until Ma Alexander had clambered aboard, cheerfully abusing the conductor for being behind time.

  So next day who should come driving slowly towards the bus stop shortly before the bus was due - extra piece of luck: a drift of penetrating rain—but Detective Sergeant Jack Stallworthy. Just as Ma Alexander, marching along under her green-and-yellow umbrella, came into view. Jam on brake. Lean across to the nearside window, wind it down.

  ‘Hey, Mrs Alexander. You on your way to HQ? Going there myself. Give you a lift if you like.’

  ‘Oh, ho, Mr Stallworth,’ - she had never properly mastered Stallworthy in all the years he had known her - ‘Grace o’ God you come by. This damn rain don’t do nobody no good.’

  She lowered her umbrella, gave it a good shaking, closed it up and heaved herself in beside him.

  Tempted though he was to begin operations as they drove along, he restrained himself. As much softening up as possible was what was wanted here.

  So he chatted about the weather and about his garden and hers—she had just picked her first crop of broad beans; the Day Lilies he had split into two clumps last autumn were giving a fine show now - until he drew up at the back of the big Headquarters building, silent as if it was still crouching under the bedclothes in the early morning drizzle.

  ‘Won’t be nobody here yet,’ Mrs Alexander said. ‘Who you come to see anyhow?’

  Jack cursed himself.

  Too clever by half. No story prepared.

  ‘Oh. Oh, I’ve got to see the Force doc,’ he managed to get out at last. ‘Just a check-up. But best be on the safe side.’

  ‘You gonna have to wait till half-past nine, ten o’clock, ‘fore old Doc Smith get here. You better come in the canteen with me. I’ll fix us up both with a nice cup o’ tea.’

  ‘Just the job, Mrs A.’

  And just the job it was. If he couldn’t get round her while they were companionably sipping their tea, he’d never be able to.