The Laundry Man

by Graham Ison

Feather shrugged. ‘Dunno,’ he said.

  ‘Well then, how did you know which boxes to take?’

  Contrary to popular myth, there is no honour among thieves, just an overwhelming fear that if one villain grasses on another, he will, sooner or later, get his come-uppance. This come-uppance usually takes the form of becoming a permanent part of a motorway, or other similar building project. ‘Winston was going to point them out to us,’ said Feather with evident reluctance.

  ‘Really? How interesting. What was all the gear for, then?’ Fox was referring to the cutting equipment that had been found in the transit van, equipment which the thieves had not had time to unload, thanks to the rapid intervention of the Flying Squad.

  ‘Winston never had no keys to get us into the cages. Anyway, Horsfall said it didn’t have to look like no inside job.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Fox. ‘Very shrewd.’ He stood up. ‘Well, thank you for your kind assistance in this matter, Lenny. It is evident that we shall now have to talk to Mr Winston Beresford.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘It never rains but it pours, Denzil,’ he said to his DI.

  *

  It has to be said that Winston Beresford was not the happiest of souls when Fox decided to bring him up from the cells and interview him. In all honesty, however, he probably felt safer in the custody of the Metropolitan Police than elsewhere. Danny Horsfall was an irritable man at the best of times, and the news, which doubtless had already reached him, about the failure of the safe deposit heist would have made him extremely angry. And in common with all those in Horsfall’s employment — however tenuously — Beresford felt that it was better to be somewhere where Horsfall could not get at him. Not that his current predicament was much better.

  ‘Well, Winston, how are they treating you in here?’ Fox sat himself opposite Beresford in another of the interview rooms at Bow Street police station.

  ‘I got nothing to say.’

  ‘I know. It’s a grave disability to have to go through life with, but Mr Evans and I are here to try and help you.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ Beresford gazed at the two detectives suspiciously.

  ‘When you got sent down for that burglary, about four years back, who was the handler?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Oh, don’t play hard to get, Winston. You know what I mean. Who was the bloke that the gear got knocked out to?’

  Beresford thought about that question long and hard. Eventually he came to the conclusion that he had little to lose. The way things were, it looked likely that he would be doing time for the rest of his life. ‘It was Paxton,’ he said. ‘ ’Cept he weren’t called Paxton then.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ said Fox. ‘What was he called?’

  ‘Can’t remember,’ said Beresford.

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me either,’ said Fox. ‘Well, I suppose we’ll have to have a little chat with him about it.’ He paused to consider his next line of questioning. ‘Your friend Lenny Feather, he of the overweight constitution, tells me, Winston, that you were the one who was to point out the safe deposit boxes that Mr Horsfall wished to acquire.’

  ‘He tells lies,’ said Beresford hopefully.

  ‘Yes, I know, dear boy, but on this occasion I think he might just be telling the truth, on account of he’s desperately trying to get out from under.’

  ‘Don’t know nothing about it.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ Fox made himself comfortable. ‘Let’s try again, shall we? Horsfall set this job up. He paid you to open the door, and he paid Feather to take the boxes out. This much I know. But, Winston, I also know more ...’

  Beresford looked unhappy. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Fox. ‘Like the work you did at Merpax as a security guard. I use the term security loosely, of course. We know of at least one valuable asset that went astray during your tenure of office, and doubtless, were we to look further, we would find more.’ He beamed disconcertingly at Beresford. ‘Got the drift, my son?’

  Beresford surrendered. ‘What you want to know, man?’

  ‘That’s better,’ said Fox, and celebrated this minor triumph by lighting a cigarette. ‘Simple, really. Which were the twelve boxes that Horsfall wanted lifting from the safe deposit?’

  By way of answer, Beresford took off a shoe and a sock, an action which caused Fox to wrinkle his nose. Then he took a small piece of paper, which had been adhering to the sole of his foot, and placed it on the table. ‘Them’s the numbers,’ he said.

  ‘Splendid,’ said Fox. ‘Why did he want them? Did he say?’

  ‘He don’t tell me nothing,’ said Beresford, and after a pause, added, ‘He don’t tell no one nothing.’

  ‘With one exception,’ said Fox thoughtfully as he gazed at the scrap of paper. ‘As a matter of interest, Winston, were you the security guard who went to Amsterdam on Good Friday with a driver called Robinson?’

  ‘I might have been.’ Beresford looked worried.

  ‘Good,’ said Fox. ‘My inspector here will be interested in the statement you are about to make regarding a missing Cézanne.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Well, Tommy,’ said Charlie Shiner, ‘I can tell you who the holders of those boxes are, but I can’t open them up for you without a search warrant.’

  Fox nodded. ‘Yeah, I know, Charlie, but let’s start with the names. It might turn out that we only need to look in one of them, knowing what a devious bastard friend Horsfall is.’

  Shiner produced a ledger and read out the twelve names that accorded with the numbers Beresford had given Fox. None of them meant anything to him.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Fox. ‘Denzil, nip down to Bow Street and get a handful of briefs, will you.’ He was not talking about a collection of ladies’ undergarments.

  *

  ‘I think we’ll wait awhile on this one,’ said Fox, moving slowly from side to side on his swivel chair. ‘We’ve got Horsfall bang to rights on this safe deposit heist, but I’d rather like to pursue the matter of the disappearing Cézanne. Just so that we can wrap up all the loose ends at one and the same time.’

  ‘Right, guv,’ said Evans, laying twelve search warrants on Fox’s desk.

  ‘Oh, hang on to those for a bit, Denzil,’ said Fox. ‘We’ll be needing them later. But right now I think we’ll exercise our powers of arrest.’

  ‘Who’ve you got in mind, guv?’

  ‘Mr Robinson, a Merpax lorry driver currently residing in the parish of Chingford ... or thereabouts.’

  *

  Peter Robinson appeared almost resigned to the arrival of the police on his doorstep. It was as though he had been expecting them.

  ‘D’you remember me, Mr Robinson?’ asked Fox.

  ‘Yeah, course I do.’

  ‘Splendid. I’m arresting you for conspiring with others to steal a valuable Cézanne painting on or about the thirteenth of April last. Anything you say will be given in evidence. Shall we go?’

  ‘I told you before, I don’t know nothing about no painting.’

  Fox nodded. ‘Written that down, have you, Denzil?’ he said to Evans. And turning back to Robinson, ‘Don’t mess about. Anything you want to bring with you ... like a toothbrush?’

  ‘How long’s this going to take, then?’ asked Robinson, now becoming rapidly unnerved.

  Fox appeared to give Robinson’s question some thought. ‘The lenient way the courts are running at the moment, about seven years, I should think.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Robinson.

  ‘No need to write that down, Denzil,’ said Fox.

  *

  The clinical atmosphere of Bow Street police station had clearly had a depressing effect on Robinson. ‘Look,’ he said, when he was brought into the interview room, ‘I’ll tell you all I know.’

  ‘You will?’ asked Fox doubtfully. ‘Well, that’ll be a start, I suppose.’

  ‘I picked that load up late on Good Friday evening. I needed the extra money, see.’

  ‘What, the money you got
for nicking the painting?’

  ‘No. I said I don’t know nothing about that. No, the treble-time I was getting for doing a run on a Bank Holiday, like.’

  ‘Very generous,’ murmured Fox. ‘And who made you this bountiful offer?’

  ‘Mr Paxton. He’s one of my guv’nors.’

  ‘Yes, I know the gentleman,’ said Fox. ‘What were his instructions?’

  ‘He was there when I was loading, down Snaresbrook. That’s the depot.’

  ‘Late on a Good Friday evening?’

  ‘Yeah. Ask him if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘Oh, I shall, Mr Robinson, I shall.’

  ‘Anyhow he pointed out this crate and said as how once I got on the A12, I was to pull into the next service area past the M25. There’d be a geyser waiting, and he’d take delivery of the crate, and he’d give me another what I was to take on to Amsterdam. I reckon it had to be kosher seeing as how it was the guv’nor what told me.’

  ‘This bloke you handed the crate over to. Who was he?’

  Robinson shrugged. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Mr Paxton said he’d make hisself known like. He knew the lorry, see. But it was all right. I got this geyser to sign for the crate.’

  ‘How interesting,’ said Fox. ‘And what name did he use? Mickey Mouse?’

  Robinson frowned. ‘Don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t read what he wrote.’

  ‘That’s a surprise,’ said Fox and stood up. ‘Oh, one other thing ...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you, by any chance, have a security guard with you called Winston Beresford?’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I’m psychic,’ said Fox.

  *

  ‘I think we’ll pay this fellow a visit,’ said Fox, tapping the file on the desk in front of him.

  Evans craned forward. ‘Is that the country house burglary that Winston Beresford was nicked for, guv?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s dead, guv.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The loser.’

  ‘Every way I turn in this enquiry, Denzil,’ said Fox, ‘people are doing their best to obstruct me.’

  ‘His widow still lives there,’ said Evans helpfully.

  ‘Then why the hell didn’t you say so!’

  *

  Swann had some difficulty in finding the house, which did not please Fox, but eventually they came to it at the end of a long private driveway.

  A butler answered the door and looked down his nose at the two detectives.

  ‘I’ve come to see Mrs Curtis,’ said Fox. ‘She is expecting me.’

  ‘May I say who is calling, sir?’

  ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Fox ... of the Flying Squad.’

  The butler sniffed. ‘If you care to step inside, sir, I shall ascertain if madam is at home.’

  ‘Definitely a bit of class about this place, sir,’ said Evans, when the butler had departed.

  ‘Probably a big-time villain,’ said Fox, unwilling to give credit anywhere.

  ‘If you will come this way, sir.’ The butler hovered by a set of double doors.

  Mrs Curtis was a small woman, bird-like and highly strung. Her face was unnaturally white and the skin beneath her eyes almost transparently blue. She stood in front of the fireplace, her arms not so much folded as entwined round her body, clutching herself as though not to do so might result in her falling to pieces. Nevertheless, she occasionally released this grasp to puff nervously at a cigarette in a holder.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me, I understand.’

  ‘Yes, madam. Regarding the burglary.’

  ‘Burglary?’

  ‘Yes. I have a list here of things that were stolen.’ Fox started to read it aloud.

  ‘Oh, good heavens, that was years ago.’

  ‘Yes.’ Fox looked up. ‘Nearly five years ago, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Well, why d’you want to talk about that? I thought it had all been dealt with.’ Mrs Curtis drew heavily on her cigarette again and shivered slightly despite the warm day. She remained standing, and Fox assumed that she was not the sort of person to ask policemen to sit down.

  ‘And so it has, madam, but there is one thing that I’d like to check.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A Cézanne painting called The Orange Grove.’

  ‘Is it on the list, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well — ’

  ‘We have learned that it was probably stolen from here at that time.’

  ‘I really don’t know. My late husband dealt with all that sort of thing. What was it like?’

  Fox smiled. ‘I don’t know, Mrs Curtis. But it was a painting of, well, an orange grove, I suppose.’

  Mrs Curtis looked scathingly at Fox. ‘One would imagine so,’ she said. ‘I do seem to recall something like that,’ she continued, relenting slightly.

  ‘Is there any reason why it was not included in the list?’

  Mrs Curtis turned toward the mantelshelf and made a little ritual out of removing her cigarette from its holder and stubbing it out in an ashtray. Then she turned to face the detectives again. It wasn’t insured,’ she said. There was a distinct pause. ‘I suppose I may as well tell you. Now that Edward’s dead and the painting’s gone, there’s nothing you can do about it. Edward won it years ago from somebody in the South of France, before the war.’

  ‘Won it?’

  ‘Oh yes. An inveterate gambler was Edward. And very lucky too. We brought it back from Cannes in our yacht. It was never declared to customs, you see. I don’t know whether that would have made any difference, but Edward seemed to think so. Consequently, when it was stolen, he thought it better not to mention it. He was very upset by its loss, of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fox. ‘I can imagine.’

  *

  Fox and Evans strode past the receptionist at the Merpax Trucking Company’s offices without pausing.

  ‘’Ere,’ said the receptionist, dropping her nail file.

  ‘Indeed we are,’ said Fox and carried on to Paxton’s office.

  ‘What d’you want?’ asked Paxton, rising to his feet. There was a concerned expression on his face.

  ‘You,’ said Fox, ‘but before we adjourn to a nearby police station, we’ll have a little chat.’

  ‘What about?’ Paxton sat down again and tugged forlornly at his nicotine-stained moustache.

  ‘You may recall Mr Evans and I talking to you some time ago regarding a Cezanne painting which was entrusted to the care of your company and which mysteriously went adrift somewhere between here and Amsterdam.’

  ‘Oh that. I told you before, it wasn’t my fault it got stolen. Anyway there’s always the insurance.’

  ‘And presumably the insurance money will be enough for the loser to buy another identical Cézanne, yes?’ said Fox sarcastically.

  Paxton grinned nervously. It was a crooked sort of grin that made him appear to be in some sort of grotesque agony. ‘Well, no, of course not, but —’

  ‘Let’s stop pussy-footing about, Paxton, old friend, while I tell you a little story. Some time ago, we were lucky enough to arrest a man called Waldo Conway who told a very strange story about meeting a lorry driver at the service area on the A12 on Good Friday. Just north-east of its junction with the M25 it was. With me so far?’ Paxton glowered but said nothing. ‘Conway had to give this lorry driver a crate, in exchange for which he got another, similar crate. Now don’t you find that interesting?’

  ‘Why tell me?’ asked Paxton. ‘I was hoping that you were going to tell me that you’d recovered the painting.’

  ‘No, not yet,’ said Fox, ‘although I suspect it is but a matter of time. Now, having learned of this fascinating chain of events, we decided to have another word with your driver Robinson. As a consequence, the same Mr Robinson is locked up in a cell in Bow Street police station at this very moment. Incidentally he’s unlikely to be at work tomorrow. Hope that doesn’t bugge
r up your schedules too much.’ Fox smiled. ‘And Mr Robinson has been extremely helpful to us. Chatting away about mysterious Good Friday goings-on at Snaresbrook.’ Fox waved a hand vaguely round the office. ‘Here, in fact. Actually told very much the same story as friend Conway. Mr Robinson suggested that a little chat with you might be beneficial to our investigations, so here we are. Isn’t that incredible?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Now that surprises me,’ said Fox. ‘Robinson was bandying your name about rotten. Actually volunteered the information that you were here on the evening of Good Friday and that you personally gave him those instructions. And just to make sure, my detective inspector here took a written statement to that effect. Under caution, of course.’

  ‘I don’t believe any of this,’ said Paxton, giving a very good impression of a man who believed it all.

  ‘And as if that wasn’t enough,’ continued Fox enthusiastically, ‘Mr Conway went on to tell us the name of the gentleman to whom he delivered the crate once he had got it from your man Robinson. There, don’t you think that was enterprising of us?’

  ‘He’s telling a pack of lies.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Robinson. I always had my doubts about him. Was thinking of sacking him anyway.’

  ‘You were probably right,’ said Fox. ‘What intrigues me is that you appear uninterested in the name of the man who finally got the crate.’

  ‘Well, who was it?’ Paxton sounded as though he didn’t really want to know.

  Fox smiled and shook his head slowly. ‘Would you believe, a Mr Daniel Horsfall of Epping Forest?’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ said Paxton.

  ‘Naughty,’ said Fox. ‘He’s the managing director of the company that has ninety per cent of the holding in Merpax. Now d’you remember?’ Fox gave him no time to answer what was, after all, a rhetorical question. ‘Which conveniently leads me on to another matter. Winston Beresford.’

  ‘What about him?’ Paxton was beginning to look as though he were being hammered into the ground inch by inch.

  ‘Worked for you as a security guard, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, I believe so.’

  ‘We’ve arrested him too.’

  ‘What for?’ Paxton’s voice was flat.