The Laundry Man

by Graham Ison

  ‘Well, you don’t keep going to different laundries, do you?’

  ‘I’ve got a washing machine,’ said Probert drily.

  ‘So’s Conway,’ said Fox. ‘It’s called Horsfall.’

  Probert shook his head. ‘We’re not talking about a lorry-load of colour television sets here, Tommy,’ he said. ‘Horsfall has got a group of companies, all legitimately set up, some with directors that are kosher. The whole thing’s neatly stitched up.’

  ‘He doesn’t know what it is to be neatly stitched up,’ growled Fox. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, I wish you luck. If there’s anything I can do to help ...’

  ‘There is ...’

  ‘I was afraid of that.’

  ‘The first thing, to save my lads a lot of legwork, is a run-down on what exactly this toe-rag has got. Then, I shall start looking into it all. And if there are any dregs when I’ve finished, you’re welcome to them.’

  ‘This could take for ever,’ said Probert.

  Fox shrugged. ‘So what? It’s all in a good cause. I have been assigned personally by the Commissioner.’

  ‘What, to take Horsfall apart?’

  ‘No. To investigate the robbery at Surbiton and the shooting of the PC. But my money says Horsfall had a hand in it.’

  ‘I would say that’s stretching your brief a bit,’ said Probert.

  ‘It’s my job,’ said Fox defensively, ‘and I’ll do it my way.’

  ‘And it’ll be your funeral if you’re not careful,’ said Probert. ‘I just want to make sure that I don’t fall down the hole at the interment.’

  *

  Lionel Feather was an odiously fat man. What he lacked in brainpower, which was a quite considerable deficiency, he more than made up for in brawn. Despite being so large he was quite nimble and kept himself in trim, if such a word could be applied to a man who was well-nigh twenty stones in weight. Although he neither drank nor smoked, his one vice was food, but whether his bulk was the cause or the effect of his over-indulgence was open to conjecture.

  He was employed by Danny Horsfall to put things right. Things that Horsfall’s army of accountants and lawyers could not resolve without getting their hands dirty. And right now, Waldo Conway was one of those things.

  Mr Horsfall and Mr Feather rarely met. Most of their transactions were undertaken by telephone, and any payments which fell due to Mr Feather for services rendered found their way into Mr Feather’s bank account by some mysterious banking machinery of which Mr Feather was in total ignorance. But then, as has already been implied, Mr Feather was none too bright. He did, however, know how to get the money out when he needed it, and that was all that mattered.

  Danny Horsfall’s message to Lionel Feather — or Lenny, as he was known — was terse. Find Waldo Conway, wherever he was, and talk to him regarding his current activities, which, it seemed, were in danger of embarrassing Danny Horsfall to the extent that they might even put him in prison. And Danny Horsfall did not find that a pleasing prospect.

  It was not a difficult assignment. Not to Lenny Feather.

  But then Lenny Feather had access to sources of information denied to Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Fox of the Flying Squad. Feather called them his conduits. He was unaware of the precise definition of the word in an intelligence context; it was just a phrase he had picked up. But it puzzled him, none the less. To him, a conduit was a piece of piping which had been a part of his dim past when, as a youth, he had been apprenticed to an electrician.

  Unfortunately for Lenny Feather, he had diverted what little knowledge he had gained in that profession to the art of safe-blowing. His first venture into this field had earned him seven years’ imprisonment and by the time he was released, four years and eight months later — he hadn’t the brains to be other than of good conduct — he found that the bottom had fallen out of the safe-blowing business. Given that its natural successor, computer crime, was completely beyond him, he had been obliged to turn to muscle ... and Danny Horsfall’s employment. Horsfall preferred to describe him as a consultant.

  After receiving Horsfall’s telephone call and the promise of a monkey — five hundred pounds was a lot of money to Feather — Lenny made diligent enquiries. Those enquiries, which took the form of wandering the environs of the West End talking to faces who had much to lose by not co-operating with muscle the size of Feather, eventually led him to an insalubrious flat in the Pimlico area of south-west London.

  Waldo Conway was at home, deeming it politic to stay indoors for the foreseeable future. Having been lucky enough to escape the clutches of the combined forces of law and order on his return to Dover, he was now living the life of a virtual recluse. Apart, that is, from occasional — and risky — conjugal visits from Eugenie Vandermeer who made her way to Pimlico by varied and circuitous routes. Just in case she was being followed. She wasn’t. But only because Fox did not wish to capture Waldo Conway. Not yet, anyway.

  Lenny Feather surveyed the door of the flat. Apart from an ancient rim lock, there appeared to be little in the way of security. Furthermore, there was no bell or knocker and Feather regarded that as sufficient justification for opening it with what is known as bodily pressure.

  ‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ Somewhat disturbed, Waldo Conway leapt up from his viewing of the three-thirty at Towcester, cursing the fact that he had left his automatic in the bedroom.

  ‘I’m Mr Feather.’

  ‘Oh, are you?’ Conway peered nastily at the huge man now filling the doorway. ‘Well, what the hell d’you want?’

  ‘I’ve come to talk to you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Mr Horsfall sent me.’

  ‘Oh!’ Conway visibly relaxed and sat down again in front of the television. ‘What for?’

  ‘Mr Horsfall,’ said Feather importantly, ‘is not happy about you. He sent me to tell you to stay away from him. You’re embarrassing him.’

  Conway scoffed. ‘Embarrassing him? You’ve got to be joking. Nobody embarrasses Danny Horsfall.’

  ‘That’s absolutely right,’ said Feather. ‘Very kosher is that.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Conway tensed. Feather’s very size made him apprehensive: there was something about the man that implied a threat.

  Feather walked across to Conway’s chair and with the minimum of effort, hauled him into an upright position.

  ‘Here, bloody hold on,’ said Conway, in no mood to appreciate the irony of his own comment.

  ‘That’s what I’m doing,’ said Feather and promptly delivered a crippling blow to Conway’s solar plexus. The force of the blow caused Waldo not only to fly back into the armchair but to tip it over, taking him with it. Slowly, he manoeuvred himself on to all fours and glowered at Feather from the comparative security of having the armchair between him and his attacker. ‘What the bloody hell’s this all about?’ he yelled.

  ‘You paid Mr Horsfall a visit the other day. With a bag of bent money.’

  ‘What if I did? And he still owes me thirteen grand for it.’

  ‘Mr Horsfall don’t like people visiting him without an appointment. It’s not always convenient. And another thing. You never told him that the shooter you used in that job in France was the one what was used in that job down Surbiton ...’ Feather pronounced it Serbi-tone. ‘The one where that copper got shot.’

  ‘So what?’ Conway was still on all fours behind the armchair.

  ‘Well, Mr Horsfall don’t like it, see. It might bring the coppers nosing round. S’matter of fact, it has. Mr Horsfall’s running a business. All legit, like. He don’t like nothing like that, see.’

  ‘What are you going on about?’ said Conway. ‘Horsfall’s as bent as arseholes.’

  Feather sucked through his teeth. ‘You never ought to go about saying things like that about Mr Horsfall. He’s a tycoon, he is.’

  Conway stood up, slowly, and rubbed his stomach. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘What Mr Horsf
all said —’

  ‘Oh, stop all this “Mr Horsfall” crap, for Christ’s sake. I know who you’re talking about, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘He says don’t come near him no more.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Conway. ‘He got Aids or something?’

  ‘He don’t want you to go nowhere near his office. It’s like a bit dodgy. So the message is, if you’ve got any more bent gelt, take it some other place. Got it?’

  ‘What about the thirteen grand he owes me, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Feather, ‘that was the other thing. He said to tell you as how you can whistle for that.’

  ‘What d’you mean, whistle for it?’ Conway was outraged.

  ‘He said to put it down to experience for being so much trouble. Sort of protection, like.’

  ‘Sod that for a game of soldiers,’ said Conway. ‘You can piss off and tell him he’s into me for thirteen Ks, and if he thinks he seeing me off for that, he can think again.’ His confidence had been boosted by the fact that Eugenie had emerged from the bedroom and was now holding Conway’s newly acquired pistol very firmly in the approved double-handed grip as taught at the FBI Academy at Quantico and elsewhere.

  ‘Hey, you, fatso,’ said Eugenie, displaying a mastery of idiomatic English that even Conway was unaware she possessed. ‘Do like he says, or I turn you into a calendar, eh?’

  ‘The word’s colander, Genie,’ said Conway.

  *

  ‘Well, who the hell was she?’ demanded Horsfall, spitting into the mouthpiece of the telephone. He was quivering with rage at this latest affront to his authority. ‘What d’you mean, you don’t know?’ Irascibly, he slammed down the receiver and glowered at the blank wall opposite him. Something would have to be done about Waldo Conway. There was no way that a two-bit, low-life villain like Conway, or his bird for that matter, was going to pull a gun on any employee of Danny Horsfall and get away with it. No, sir!

  Chapter Nine

  It was then that Tommy Fox had a stroke of luck.

  It does not often happen that a criminal enquiry is solved by a stroke of luck, but once in a while a little good fortune comes the way of the investigating officer. And most of Fox’s colleagues were of the view that if anyone was to have such an unfair advantage, it would undoubtedly be the operational head of the Flying Squad.

  Ralph Davenport was an art dealer. Now turned sixty years of age, he had set out in life hoping to be a painter, but even the Slade had been unable to create a talent that did not exist. Despite his passion for art, he had eventually been convinced by his tutors, if not by himself, that he was unlikely to become a great master. And so he had found consolation in becoming a dealer. And a good one. His reputation was far from world-wide, but his opinions were certainly respected in the field of the French impressionist school.

  It had been a struggle. In the nineteen-fifties, money had been tight, and people were not in the mood for buying pictures. There had been occasions when he had almost given up and taken to something more lucrative. It had always pained him to see persons of lesser intellect than his own buying and selling second-hand cars at apparently huge profits, and in common with many people of high intelligence he could never understand how it was that the less educated appeared to make the most money.

  The one quality he had overlooked, however, was called pavement cunning. The car dealers had it; alas, Ralph Davenport did not. Which was why he was able to provide Fox with his stroke of luck.

  Davenport had heard vaguely of the police Art and Antiques Squad, indeed one of its members had once visited him in search of a stolen painting, but Davenport had no idea where the Squad operated from. Consequently, when finally he became convinced that all was not right with his business, it was to West End Central police station that he went.

  ‘And what can I do for you, sir?’ The ageing constable looked up enquiringly.

  ‘There’s something funny going on,’ said Davenport.

  ‘Indeed there is, sir.’ The constable sighed. Over the years, he had dealt with many persons of unsound mind, and had learned that appearances were often deceptive. The fact that Davenport wore a conventional dark suit and carried a brief-case did nothing to dispel the constable’s thought that another one of them may just have strolled into the station. ‘And what sort of funny goings-on would they be, sir?’

  ‘I am an art dealer,’ said Davenport, ‘and a month or so ago, I appraised a painting, which I was convinced was a genuine Cézanne, but which the eventual purchaser has now complained was a copy. I have been to examine this painting, and it is not the one that I appraised.’

  ‘Ah!’ This was easy. The constable would not have to do anything ... except tell someone else. ‘Sounds like a job for the CID, sir,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Perhaps if you’d just take a seat, I’ll see if there’s someone who can help you.’

  A detective constable eventually appeared. With slackened tie and shirt sleeves rolled to just below the elbow, he had cultivated the harassed look that he considered essential to his profession, and half-listened to what Davenport had to say. Then he made a few notes, muttered something technical about pecuniary advantage and assured the art dealer that a specialist would be in touch.

  When the West End Central detective’s report was received in the Art and Antiques Squad, Davenport’s name was fed into their computer and produced the fascinating information that his gallery was a limited company in which Davenport held only five per cent of the shares. A man called Pogson held another five, but the remaining ninety per cent were held by a company of which a certain Mr Daniel Horsfall was managing director. Against Horsfall’s name was a marker. It said that Detective Chief Superintendent Fox of S08 had an interest in this man and must be informed of any developments affecting him. The officer in charge of the Art and Antiques Squad wisely decided that the Squad should take no action on Davenport’s complaint until reference had been made to Fox.

  Fox considered the matter carefully — for all of five minutes — and decided that the report of the swopped Cezanne was something into which he should look more closely. He and DI Evans paid Davenport a visit at his gallery.

  ‘I am Thomas Fox ... of the Flying Squad.’ Fox gazed round the silent gallery.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Fox peered intently at the small man standing in front of him. ‘You are Mr Davenport?’ he asked. ‘Mr Ralph Davenport?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘And you went into West End Central police station recently and told the officer about a painting.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I did. Are you from the police, then?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Davenport.’ Fox nodded patiently.

  ‘I’m sorry. I thought you said something about flying.’

  Fox smiled amiably. ‘The Flying Squad, Mr Davenport. It is a branch of the Criminal Investigation Department at New Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Davenport, who didn’t really see at all. ‘Er, perhaps you’d better come into the office.’ He glanced across the gallery at a languid young woman whose father’s income allowed her to work there without putting any strain on Davenport’s financial resources. ‘I’m just going to the office with these gentlemen, Celia.’ The girl smiled vapidly but said nothing.

  ‘Mr Davenport,’ said Fox, once they were seated. ‘I know you’ve told this story at least once before, but I’m going to ask you to do so again.’

  ‘Certainly.’ All Davenport’s vagueness disappeared once he started talking about paintings. ‘I was asked to appraise a Cézanne,’ he said. ‘It was one of his lesser-known works ... probably about 1885. It was called “The Orange Grove” and was painted, I should think, in the South of France, It had been out of circulation for many years ...’ He paused. ‘Probably been in a private collection somewhere. Anyway, I was told that it hadn’t been on the market for a long time. It could even have been that it had never been on the market. It sometimes happens that paintings, even as old as that, h
ave never been offered up before.’

  ‘Where did you get it from?’ asked Fox.

  Davenport seemed disconcerted by the interruption. ‘I ... er, well ... It was my partner who acquired it.’

  ‘And where did he get it from?’ Fox’s questions were incisive.

  Davenport looked puzzled, as though this was an entirely unnecessary intervention. ‘I’m not sure, as a matter of fact.’

  Fox nodded. ‘Go on, Mr Davenport.’

  ‘Anyhow, he said that he’d acquired it and that he had a client in Amsterdam who was willing to pay a substantial sum, provided that there was some authentication.’

  ‘Authentication?’ Fox thought he knew but wanted to make sure.

  Davenport had the look of a man about to explain something rather simple to a child. ‘People who pay huge sums for a painting by a known artist want some sort of guarantee that what they are buying is genuine.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable,’ said Fox. ‘And it was you who was asked to provide that authentication?’

  ‘Yes, and I was happy to do so. There was no doubt in my mind that it was a genuine Cézanne.’ Davenport launched into a short lecture. ‘There are all sorts of ways that a fake can be detected these days,’ he continued. ‘The use of x-rays and radiography ... that sort of thing, you know — ’

  ‘Yes, of course. I quite understand,’ said Fox, as though he were thoroughly conversant with the mysteries of authentication. In reality he wanted to get to the crux of the matter. ‘You were convinced?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely. Despite the lack of other proof.’

  ‘Other proof?’

  ‘Yes. When a painting has changed hands at regular intervals, it carries with it the authentications of previous appraisers. Sometimes they amount almost to a dossier.’

  ‘But there was nothing with this?’

  ‘No. As I say, it hadn’t been on the market within living memory.’ Davenport paused briefly. ‘To tell you the truth, I was unaware of its existence until I saw it.’

  ‘But you were satisfied that it was the real McCoy?’

  ‘A McCoy?’ Davenport blinked behind his glasses.