The Bad Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  He’d be entitled. But, no, damn it, he’d never dare.

  So let him have what thoughts he liked under those grey patches of crinkly hair.

  Just so long as he makes no attempt to stop me going in and passing the time of day - passing the time of day: what a laugh - with Mac.

  But the old clerk did no more than half look up from his computer keys.

  Push Mac’s door open.

  ‘Hi, Mac. Passing by. Thought I’d see how it’s going.’

  ‘Oh, Jack. It’s you. How’s yourself?’

  But back immediately to the page of figures in front of him.

  Christ, did the fellow never get tired of looking at rows and rows of figures? Didn’t he ever, just sometimes, lean back in his chair, stare up at the ceiling, think about something else? A woman? What he was going to do when he’d finished his day’s work? Even what he was going to have for dinner?

  Was the bugger totally inhuman?

  ‘Oh, I’m all right, mate. Never fitter.’

  ‘Oh, aye? So what are you doing up in this neck o’ the woods?’

  Damn it, once again no excuse ready to hand.

  ‘Been seeing the quack, you know.’

  And the look of sharp suspicion.

  What the hell now …? Oh, yes. Christ, he’d just said he’d never felt fitter. Trust bloody Mac to take both remarks at face value. And to wonder.

  ‘And you?’ he jabbed in quickly. ‘How are you? How’s it all going?’

  Mac grunted.

  ‘Getting on,’ he said. ‘Getting on. Hell of a lot to do.’

  ‘Oh, yes? And have they got hold of that bloke who left the Fisheries Development Authority yet? Forget his name. The one who went for a hippie or something.’

  Can I just take a quick look in the direction of that cupboard now? Right behind me. Or will Mac, somehow, guess what I’m after?

  ‘Turner. Fellow by the name of Turner. And, no, they havna seen hair nor hide of the laddie so far.’

  ‘Oh, well, means at least you haven’t got to begin on all that Symes stuff yet awhile.’

  Now he did take one rapid glance at the battered old cupboard. Doors still bulged a little open. And, just where he had spotted it before, the folder. Just the same half-inch of pale blue card sticking out from between the same two files.

  But, damn it, on the top of the cupboard there was now a key. Bright, shiny and new-looking. It hadn’t been there before. Could have sworn to that. So had Mac just had it made for him? Was he going to push the cupboard doors closed, straining against that mass of files inside, and lock it up? Then would he put the key in his pocket? Ninety-nine per cent certain he would. Pernickety bloody tight-wad.

  Surprisingly, in answer to that casual remark about the Symes documents Mac abandoned his scrutiny of the figures in front of him and actually did lean back in his chair.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I canna usefully begin on that stuff in the cupboard till they’ve found yon Turner. And that’s the devil of it. It means DI Cutts’ll send me on leave. And, you know, it’s no’ so very convenient to go just now.’

  Jack did his best to conceal a smile. Old Mac and his anti-holiday phobia.

  ‘How’s that, then?’ he asked mischievously. ‘Nice time of year this. Get away before all the families. Kids all over everywhere. I’d have thought you’d jump at the chance. You not having a wife to think of. Anything like that.’

  ‘Weel, no. To tell you the truth, I dinna much like going away. What’s there to do, cut off from what really interests you? All I do, when I have to take any leave due, is go down to my wee flat and spend most of the time wishing I could get back to work.’

  ‘Well, it takes all sorts. I must say, nothing I like better than to be away from the job. Off down to Devon or somewhere with my Lily, get a bit of sun, look at a few houses for when it comes to retirement.’

  ‘Retirement,’ Mac shot the word out as if it was a gobbet of bad meat. ‘Man, that’s something I just canna bear to think on.’

  ‘Why not?’

  If he couldn’t see his way to asking this block of Scotch granite whether he would accept a thousand quid or something not to notice a blue file walking out of here, at least he could tease the bugger.

  ‘Why not, Mac? I’d have thought you’d have had enough of it here. Day after day, stuck in the rank of sergeant, same bloody mingy pay as meself.’

  Wait.

  Could this actually be a way into it? Into the forbidden subject? Seemingly idle chat about having too little money? And then on to how that could be remedied?

  Quick, don’t let the talk flag. Bloody Mac’ll be face down in his figures in a sec.

  ‘And not much thanks you’ve had, Mac, for all you’ve done either. I’d have thought you’d have gone shooting up the ladder by now, in fact. With your head for figures and talent for sorting out the tricky sods. I’d have seen you go way past DI. On to Superintendent, even Detective Chief Superintendent. I can see you as a DCS, easy.’

  ‘Aye. But there’s some who can’t. Some who never could see me go one step higher than I have.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Who are they, then?’

  Was this going in the right direction? Well, not far off it at least. So stick with it, and maybe in a minute or two steer it back on course.

  ‘Well, just the one, if you must know. A certain Detective Chief Superintendent sitting in this very building.’ Hey, revelations. Revelations trickling out of the Scottish rock. Never thought I’d see the day.

  ‘What, you don’t mean old Detchie? He been blocking your path?’

  ‘Weel, since you’re naming a name, yes. Yes, Detective Chief Superintendent Detch has had it in for me ever since I was a beat copper and he was Custody Sergeant at the same nick, the old Mussel Street one.’

  ‘Oh, yes? How did that come about, then?’

  Mac did not at once reply.

  For a moment Jack thought he had lost him. That his chair would jerk forward and his head go down again to his sheet of figures. If only out of embarrassment at having for once lowered his guard.

  But it seemed the silence was no more than a slight hesitation.

  ‘It’s a long story, laddie. And one I havna told for many a year.’

  ‘All the same, Mac, I’d like to hear. I’ve often wondered why you were stuck here when you could have …’

  ‘Weel, I called it a long story, and so it is. But its beginning was short and sweet. Or no’ so sweet, if you like.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Mac gave a grunt of a laugh. A laugh you could still hear the bitterness in.

  ‘Simple enough. One evening on patrol I stopped a man in a car, drunk as could be. I drove him mesel’ to the nick to charge him. Drunk driving. His licence like to go, and mebbe a month or two inside. But, when I took him down to the cells to book him in, what should Sergeant Detch, as he was then, say the moment he saw the fellow? What but Hello, Ginger, what are you doing here? Did I tell you yon drunk had a fine crop of red hair?’

  ‘No. But go on.’

  ‘Weel, when I told Sergeant Detch the fellow was there because he was dead drunk in charge of a motor vehicle, he just said something like surely there’s things friends like us can overlook.’

  Jack guessed it then. Mac, however much he and Detchie had been friends in those distant days, was not one to overlook even a minor misdemeanour. Never mind an offence as serious as this Ginger’s.

  ‘And, of course,’ he said, grabbing the chance to put himself among the law-abiding, ‘you said there were some things that could not be overlooked.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And you stuck to it? I reckon you would have done. And good luck to you.’

  ‘Aye, I stuck to it. Even when yon Ginger dropped a hint there was a hundred pounds there for me, a hundred pounds at good old pre-inflation value. But it wasna good luck to me, I can tell you. Because Detch was sitting there just above me in rank, then and for ever after. He was the one making out the annual reports, a
nd seeing they looked as black about me as he could make them. In the end, too, he was the one who had me shunted off to this office, little knowing then I was here to stay till I drew my pension.’

  Well, well. Fancy old Mac sitting here marooned all these years. And Detective Chief Superintendent Detch, sir, having it in for him like that. And all because of one moment of bloody unrelenting honesty, years and years ago. Makes you think.

  Christ, what would I have done in those circs? Back then I was as innocent as Mac was. Innocent? Come on, say it. Honest. I was as honest as Mac then.

  Or was I? Hadn’t I already once or twice turned a blind eye in payment of a favour, either given or to come? Perhaps I had. Or perhaps that began a bit later. Hard to remember.

  The only thing that’s clear as day is that I did at some time or other begin. And Mac never did.

  He’s just sat here, at this desk of his, for years, toiling away at the figures-the figures of how other people have helped themselves from the kitty and lived well out of it-and he’s taken it all. The paltry pay. Never having the rank he could easily have got to. The way people have looked down at him.

  Yes, the way I look down at him. From a flea’s height.

  God, yes, and he must be bitter. Bitter as all hell, sitting there quietly adding up, subtracting, whatever it is he does. And knowing he doesn’t deserve to be where he is. Thinking it every single day, I dare say. Poor old Mac.

  Then, like a purple revealing flash of lightning on the darkest of nights, the thought came to him.

  By God, if Mac’s so bitter, as he must be, as he is, then surely he won’t, despite that Scotch honesty of his, pass up a chance of having his revenge. The chance I could give him. The revenge he’d get by letting Emslie Warnaby get away with a crime Detective Superintendent Detch, sir, would give his ears to be credited with detecting.

  And all Mac would have to do is let me walk out of here with that folder under my arm.

  He’d be laughing then, old Mac. He’d have done his enemy of old out of the great big triumph of bringing down the almighty boss of Abbotputers plc, and for himself he’d still get credit for nailing Councillor Arthur Symes.

  Bloody marvellous.

  Mac’ll never be able to resist it.

  ‘Listen, mate, how would you like to shaft friend Detch? To shaft him good and proper?’

  Mac looked at him.

  Suspicion drawing his face into a net of tightness.

  ‘I’ve got my eye on him,’ he said at last, the words dragged slowly out. ‘I’ve had the bugger in my sights for years. He’ll no’ get away with anything. Not while I’m sitting in this chair.’

  He let the chair rock backwards and forwards once or twice. A weighty pendulum.

  ‘Right. And, listen, Mac, I can see a way you could really hurt him now. With no one to know a thing about it. Except you and me.’

  Mac said nothing.

  Jack took the silence for agreement.

  Trust an uptight Scotchman like Mac not to utter an unnecessary word.

  ‘Look, mate, there’s something I happen to know. Never mind how. But I can tell you that here in this office, in that pile of stuff from the Fisheries Development Authority, as a matter of fact, there’s just one lot of correspondence that could give Detchie the biggest triumph of his career. Probably turn him from head of CID here to Assistant Chief in whatever force was first to grab him. Take him to the bloody top. It’s all just in one folder. But when that’s whisked away - and here’s the cream of the joke - you’ll still have a sweet case against Arthur Symes. So you’ll be laughing both ways. Laughing. Get it?’

  The chair crashed forward.

  ‘Aye, I get it, Jack Stallworthy. What you’re proposing, and no doubt there’s a good thick handout in it for you, is that I suppress a piece of evidence. Yes? That’s it? Yes?’

  ‘Oh, well, yes. Yes, Mac, technically it is. But think of what it’d do to Detective Chief Superintendent Detch. How it would pay him out for everything. Just think of that.’

  Mac MacAllister stood up from behind his papers-strewn desk. Shot up.

  ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Get out of this office and never show your face in here again. Because if you do, I’ll see you’re kicked out of the force, kicked so hard you’ll never know where you bounced. Now, go. Get out. Get out.’

  Chapter Eleven

  July the first. Jack saw the date on the wall calendar as he plonked himself down at his desk that new Monday morning.

  Jesus, I hadn’t realized we’ve even got to the end of June. End of June already. God, what’s happened to the days? I been in a sort of stupor ever since … Ever since sodding Mac did that to me.

  Come on, admit it. Face it. You got to, sooner or later. Ever since Mac MacAllister kicked me out of his office, and, worse, threatened to have me kicked off the force. And he would, too. Bloody iron from the neck down.

  And ever since then I’ve not really been thinking. Didn’t dare really think. Couldn’t.

  Couldn’t even let myself think of how, somehow, I might still get at that fucking blue folder. There, bang in the heart of Mac’s office. Get out … and never show your face in here again.

  And now it’s three bloody months since April the first and that bet. Weeks since sodding Emslie Warnaby gave me his fucking deadline. July the sixteenth. Just over a fortnight away. And no bloody further forward than I was when I began.

  Worse even. Haven’t I, one way and another, blocked off every possible avenue to that bloody file? Every possible avenue? Alerted old Ma Alexander. Alerted bloody Horatio Bottomley. Alerted, worst of all, Mac himself.

  Only good thing is Warnaby’s bit-of-the-other seems to have given up phoning now. Thought she’d drive me wild, yack-yack-yacking on.

  He’d like a progress report.

  It’s been a week since I spoke to you.

  Mr Stallworthy, will I have to go to that wretched Italian-y hairdresser again?

  I did ask you to keep us fully informed.

  Is your wife there, Mr Stallworthy? Can’t you speak?

  July the first. Christ, and it’ll be Lily’s birthday in no time at all. The tenth. And haven’t even thought what I’m going to get her. Not that she’s not been hinting. But she was doing that in May. She was doing it straight after Christmas, come to that. And what the hell it was she wanted I still can’t remember.

  Can I fake it with a box of chocs? A really-really big … Have to be a lot classier than what I had to dish out to old Ma Alexander. More expensive. Lot more expensive. If I can find anything looking as if it cost a bundle. And Lil will know all right. Know to a penny how much. Trust her.

  No - the thought struck him like a solid fist in the abdomen - to hell with bloody chocolates, what I’m going to do is: I’m going to tell her. Tell her. Tell her what’s there waiting for her. Ko fucking Samui. Calm fucking Seas Hotel.

  Never mind if it’s next to impossible to get at that folder. I’ll do it somehow in the end. I’ll bloody do it, and then I’ll take my Lil off to her paradise.

  Never mind high-and-mighty Emslie Warnaby saying I wasn’t to tell anyone. If I get any hint you’ve spoken to anyone, even to your wife … Well, fuck Warnaby. I’ll tell Lily what’s in store for her, for us. And that’ll be a better birthday present than anything I could buy for her. Than whatever it was she kept on hinting about.

  Because I’ve got to do it. Get that file. I’ve still got to do it, however much I’ve blown every fucking chance I’ve had so far. I’ve got to get it. And I’m going to. I’m going to take Lily to live out the rest of our days in bloody luxury. On Ko sodding Samui.

  What I’ll do is: on the birthday night I’ll take her out somewhere posh for dinner. And tell her.

  So that evening after a tiring day chasing up the theft of a stone gargoyle from the Abbey church - the Vicar had only just noticed it had gone but was threatening letters to the Argus from all his congregation if action was not taken pronto - as soon as he had got in he made his sug
gestion to Lily.

  ‘Listen, your birthday Wednesday week, ain’t it?’

  ‘Jack, you remembered.’

  He registered the brightening eyes that were saying, What am I going to get? and hastily went on.

  ‘Course I remembered. And, listen, this is what I thought. How about if we go out to dinner that night? Somewhere really nice. And, while we’re there, I’ll tell you about what it is I’ve got for you.’

  ‘Oh, Jack, lovely. Lovely. But what is it?’

  ‘Shan’t say.’

  The look of give-me, give-me redoubled.

  ‘Oh, come on. Let’s have just a hint. Is it …? Is it something like what I sort of mentioned before?’

  ‘No, my girl, ask away till you’re blue in the face, I ain’t saying. ‘Cept that it’s special. About as special as you can get, matter of fact. But we’ll go somewhere really-really nice for you to hear about it. Promise.’

  ‘But, Jack, won’t you give me the tiniest hint? Not even if, later on, I’m really-really nice to you … Or now even, if you like.’

  Her eyes went meaningfully to the doorway and the stairs beyond it.

  ‘Jesus, you’d try anything, wouldn’t you? See if you can wheedle something out of a bloke. But not this time, my girl. This time what I’ve got in mind’s too good just to tell you between the sheets. No, at dinner. Wednesday week. I thought that place, Romero’s. You liked it when we went there before.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Jack. That was months and months ago. There’s nicer places than that now. More exciting.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  What the hell was she going to suggest? Whatever it was it’d cost a bomb. Knowing Lily.

  ‘Well, frinstance there’s that new place built right out into the sea, out Grinton way.’

  ‘What’s that, then?’

  But the place did seem to ring a bell. For some reason. Not that he had any idea what it was called or anything.

  ‘Jack, you know. It was in the Argus. In “Round and About”. Saying it was the new spot all the in-crowd were going to. I’m sure I showed you.’

  ‘Dare say you did, love. But I certainly never took a blind bit of notice.’