The Sweeney 01

by Ian Kennedy-Martin

  ‘Where to, guv?"

  ‘London Airport.’ Regan looked at his watch. ‘No hurry. 21.30. Oceanic. We pick up a Yank lieutenant, San Francisco Police Department.’

  ‘What’s that about guv?’

  ‘Jesus alone knows.’

  Len let the clutch in gently. In his eight years of driving Regan he had learned how to exactly gauge the hang-overs — which were the ones where Regan was still speakable to; which the ones where you daren’t say a word. Tonight was silent night.

  James Purcell, alias Eddie Christopher, sat in his Curzon House Hotel suite, frustration building into real anger. He knew there was a plane out of London Heathrow to New York at midnight — got into Kennedy on or about five am. The way things were going, he would be on it.

  He was annoyed because he had always had some lurking doubts about the enterprise. Then, when he got to London three days ago, the up-front money was there and that had temporarily reassured him. But no contact since. And he hated hotel rooms. And he couldn’t leave it because these guys didn’t call up and leave numbers to call back.

  He had undergone a name and character transformation at London Airport. He’d had no trouble at Immigration or Customs and then had gone straight into the gents’ lavatories, locked himself in a cubicle, unpacked his kit-bag with his battery shaver, and shaved off his moustache and sideburns. Then on to his nose a large pair of horn-rims. He compared the result in a pocket mirror that he also had with the shaving kit, with the photograph in a brand-new passport. He looked like Thompson.

  The brand-new passport was in the name George Howard Thompson. That was the name he used when he registered at the Curzon House and picked up the big envelope containing the five thousand pounds sterling in cash.

  He didn’t stay in the suite all the forty-eight hours. He’d wandered the concourses, sat in the Coffee Shoppe, but always warning the switchboard that he could be paged — he would be in the hotel. He made one trip to the jeweller’s by the main doors and paid eight hundred pounds for a watch. Even for him, and he was used to easy money in quantities, two thousand dollars for a watch was bread. But it was a fine watch, or more accurately two watches. It was Kutchinsky—it had two dials under a single flat plate of clear amethyst, with just a hint of pink in it, which went well with the crackle-finish solid 22-carat gold case. A traveller’s watch, so-called. One watch face showed the time in your country of origin, the other the country where you were. He noticed one watch dial read four o’clock. Four pm five days ago when he killed the lousy cop on the other side of the world.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d killed. By no means. But it was the first time he’d killed a cop. He still had a real hangover of nervousness about that.

  He set one pair of hands on the Kutchinsky dial to London time, the other to New York time. That’s where he’d be going if he cut out of this lousy town. He liked the watch. He missed his moustache. He’d taken four months to grow it. It suited him.

  He was tall and sparely built, attractive face but a little on the anonymous side of good looks. The moustache had set it off. The glasses and the hair he’d bleached before the plane flight put an extra eight years on him. He was thirty-eight. Now he looked forty-five.

  It was six pm in the suite and he called room service for the twentieth time in his three days there. The service came fast — a BLT, root beer, coffee, and a side order of mixed salad, plus the same little waiter who was always so attentive.

  He reckoned the waiter must think he was some kind of nut — always in the room, every three hours room service, more or less the same order every time.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Thompson.’ The little waiter pushed in a trolley that could have carried a feast for six. ‘Your order, sir.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Purcell said. He was reading a copy of Holiday Britain, an incomprehensible magazine which was delivered free to the room and consisted of a hundred photographs of a technicolour country burning under a Saharan sun. This was supposed to be England? Purcell had been in London three times in his life. It had rained through all his visits. It was raining now.

  ‘Shall I lay out your food for you, sir?’ The waiter asked.

  ‘No, leave it on the trolley. I’ll roll the trolley out when I’m finished.’

  ‘Shall I show you what I’ve got for you, sir?’

  Purcell looked up from the magazine, puzzled. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You’d like to see what we’ve brought you, sir?’

  ‘You’ve brought me root beer, BLT, salad... that’s what I ordered.’

  ‘Extras, sir,’ the little waiter said. He opened the door on the warm-box under the trolley. He pulled out a Smith and Wesson .38, a fifty-box of shells, and a continental-style, left-shoulder, leather-strapped canvas holster. He handed the three items to Purcell.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Purcell asked gently.

  ‘One of your employers sir,’ the man replied. His voice had some regional accent Purcell didn’t recognize.

  ‘We had to check you out. We’re sorry we kept you waiting two days —’

  ‘Three, Purcell corrected.’

  ‘Sorry, we are.’

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘You will drink your coffee, sir, before it gets cold.’

  ‘Fuck the coffee what happens next?’ Purcell’s voice hard.

  ‘You sit on your arse and you wait’— the voice of the waiter sharp, to match Purcell’s — ‘and when we’re ready we’ll let you know. Maybe in an hour, maybe longer…’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  The waiter shrugged away an answer.

  ‘And what happens when you get round to calling me, friend?’

  ‘I’ll take you to the Broker.’

  ‘And who or what’s the Broker?’ Purcell annoyed now, feeling he’d been caught on the hop by a London hotel waiter turning out to be the contact. It hadn’t occurred to him as a possibility.

  ‘Anything we feel you must know, we’ll let you know. Do as you promised, stick the trolley out in the corridor when you’re finished with it. We’re always short of trolleys. Thoughtless bloody tourists, mostly Yanks, never putting ‘em in the corridors... bastards...,’ the waiter said without any real feeling as he walked out. He closed the door firmly behind him.

  Purcell took the gun, the shells and holster over to the cupboard and stored them in the smallest of his three suitcases. He went back, sat down and looked at the food. For some reason he couldn’t understand, he suddenly didn’t feel hungry.

  Lieutenant John Ewing, San Francisco Police Department turned out to be a tall man who gave very few words away. But Regan could work out a few things. He’d obviously been to England before. He wore a dark grey suit, white shirt, and club tie. There were frequent visitors at New Scotland Yard from the US, mostly FBI. They could be spotted at a distance of half a mile down Victoria Street — clothes too thin and lightweight for the English climate, always multicoloured socks. And the look of a race who went to their hairdressers daily, and had just a little too much trimmed off. Ewing’s hair was long for a US cop. His clothes were New York account executive Madison Avenue. His age, Regan calculated, about forty. His voice was slow, quiet, and firm.

  Regan showed his ident to one of the Special Branch men who took him through Customs and Immigration to pick Ewing up.

  Regan made small talk. ‘You have a good flight?’

  The man didn’t answer. Instead he paused for a moment whilst the Immigration people punched his passport with a rubber stamp, and then, turning his slow blue eyes on Regan, like he was noticing him for the first time: ‘Anything new on Purcell?’

  ‘Nothing more than the telex at 09.00 this morning.’

  Ewing nodded. He’d received that telex.

  ‘He came to London Airport. He landed as James Purcell. Immigration Officer asked him purpose of visit. He remembers the man said ‘business talks’. Immigration stamped him two months. You want to talk to the officer?’

  Ewing shook h
is head, picked up his briefcase, and headed for Customs.

  Regan could see the bulge under Ewing’s left shoulder. Nonetheless he couched it as a question. ‘Mr Ewing, are you armed?’

  Ewing looked at him and nodded.

  ‘Small formality. The serial number of your gun.’ Regan was already signalling a young Customs Officer and pointing towards a cubicle. He steered Ewing towards the cubicle. ‘Things get stolen in hotels. Including guns. Regulations. All serial numbers of all guns entering the country.’

  The US detective shrugged. From his expression it was obvious he considered his time was being wasted. There was another unspoken question in the expression. Did he look to Regan like somebody who’d leave his gun lying around a hotel to get stolen?

  They walked into the opaque glass cubicle. Regan asked for the gun. Ewing pulled it out and handed it across. It was a Navy Colt .45.

  ‘Lieutenant Ewing of the San Francisco Police will be with us for some time.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The Customs Officer was young and enthusiastic. He took the gun to the desk lamp and read off the serial number on the stock and made a note of it on a piece of official paper. Ewing still a blank face of controlled impatience.

  ‘Sorry about this. I think you’ve been to England before. You appreciate we invented red tape.’ Regan tried to make light of it.

  ‘Any ammunition for this revolver, sir?’ the young Customs Officer asked.

  Ewing reached in his right-hand jacket pocket and pulled out a clear plastic tear-off pack — official PD issue — containing a dozen shells.

  The Customs man took them and examined them. Regan saw his sudden reaction. Regan reached across and took the plastic pack from the Customs man. Each of the .45 shells must have been placed in a vice and an X cut with a hacksaw across the business end of the bullet. When fired, the shell would spread and blow a hole three inches wide through any part of a man, instead of a half-inch hole.

  ‘Dumdum bullets,’ Regan said, ‘I know they’re not legal in war.’ He turned and looked at the Customs Officer. The young bloke shrugged.

  Regan handed the plastic roll back to the visitor. ‘Can I ask you why you cut bullets into dumdums?’

  The American took his time, then decided his answer. ‘If I shoot someone in San Francisco, Mr Regan, I shoot to kill ‘em.’ He said it quietly. ‘Otherwise I don’t shoot at all.’

  It was the first time he had been genuinely communicative since his arrival in England.

  They picked up Purcell at ten o’clock. Two men, one the little room service waiter, the other a man of average height but very broad, with a bald head on a bull neck. Purcell and the waiter’s friend were not introduced. The waiter’s friend may have been important, on the other hand he may just have been the chauffeur. He drove the battered Austin Cambridge from the hotel west to Fulham. Their destination a pub in the Fulham Road.

  The place was crowded. It had been a long time since Purcell had been in a crowded English pub. The smell hit him again — a smell like a marine company sergeants’ mess after manoeuvres, sweat and beer and men. The little hotel waiter began chattering on in a nondescript way, remarks about weather, horses, tomorrow’s winners, and an attempt to explain to Purcell, who knew all about it and wasn’t interested anyway, the business of English Pools and how people made fortunes winning them.

  They were clearly waiting for somebody, the little waiter and the driver. The somebody didn’t turn up.

  Closing time. The drunks in the nightly ritual with the barmaids about that one last drink, and snarling at the historic refusal. Slurred voices in a loud blanket of good-byes and good will among those not blind drunk. Everybody beginning to filter noisily out. Now it was clear that the somebody who was supposed to turn up hadn’t, Purcell began to get annoyed. The little waiter, ignoring the American’s stony look, went off to make a phone call. He came back. ‘You’re cleared,’ he said.

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘The man came here half an hour ago and looked you over. You’re who you say you are. We’ll go now to his house.’

  ‘What man? What house? And you said you’d checked me out already?’

  The little man answered one of the questions. ‘So you’ve been checked again. People get killed in this game. I’ve got a vested interest in staying alive. Five more years I get me Curzon House pension coming. Come on.’

  Then they were driving through night London, this time heading north. Purcell would have liked to know the areas they were passing through, but he didn’t ask. He knew the centre of London quite well. After a big job in America he’d often gone Londonwards or elsewhere in Europe for the cooling off period — in fact he felt he’d invented the device. A bank is heisted in some backwoods in Wisconsin — the cops don’t turn their attention immediately to looking for the thief in Bruxelles or London. First they look locally, then they look interstate. Purcell considered it his trademark. He was sure the FBI, who were mostly interested in his activities, bank robberies being Federal offences, did not know this trademark.

  He saw a liquor store. It had a sign on it — BRENT WINE AND SPIRITS. He tried to remember what he’d heard about Brent. He decided it amounted to nothing.

  The house was in a street off Brent High Street. It looked unoccupied. Two of the lower front windows were broken. The garden gate was hanging on to one hinge.

  The door was opened by a man who’d have to bow his head to get through most doors. He was several inches over six feet, and white haired. He’d be about fifty. His face was expressionless. ‘Welcome to London, Mr Purcell. My name is James.’ He extended a hand to Purcell’s arm and led him down the dim lit corridor to a room at the rear of the ground floor. There were other doors off the hall, all open, showing dirty bare rooms without carpets or furniture.

  It was a surprise then for the American when he followed the man into the last room. It was comfortably, almost luxuriously furnished. A single furnished room in an empty house — Purcell wondered about that. The man indicated that Purcell should sit in a deep leather armchair, then pointed to a drinks cabinet. Purcell shook his head.

  ‘We’ll get straight to the point,’ the man said. ‘We should give you some facts on the political aspects of the venture we’re about to embark on.’

  ‘I’m not interested in your politics,’ Purcell said quietly.

  The big man studied him, no expression, but nodding slowly. ‘We don’t give a tit whether you are or not. The distinction that I must state and you must understand, is we’re not just another bunch of bank robbers. We’re politically motivated.’

  ‘And I’m not interested in politics,’ Purcell said again, softly and firmly.

  ‘Don’t you see I’m trying to tell you something that might affect the way you draft this job’s something that could fundamentally affect your approach?’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘These fifteen men you get to pull this job, they’re not just robbers, they’re soldiers. Disciplined soldiers. They will take risks that professional robbers wouldn’t take.’

  Purcell nodded slowly. ‘Okay, I get that. Now a key question which was never answered by your contact man in New York, I want an answer now.’ He studied the tall man. ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because you’re the best draftsman in the world, our professional informants tell us.’

  ‘The real reason,’ Purcell insisted. ‘You know what we plan to hit in London. Not an English bank, but an American one. We have a lot of grass roots sympathy in America.’

  ‘What d’you mean, "grass roots sympathy"?’

  ‘If something goes wrong we don’t want it to look like one of our operations, but a professional job planned, drafted by a professional American, working in London. D’you understand?’

  ‘What’s going to go wrong?’ Purcell asked softly.

  ‘The Honourable Mrs Astor booked a cruise to New York. Nothing could go wrong; in fact the ship Titanic was designed in such a way that it coul
dn’t sink. If the raid that you research and set up goes wrong, you’re an American bank raider who organized certain people to rob banks in London.’

  Purcell took the point. ‘When do I start?’

  ‘We’re ready to go. You tell us.’

  The interview was over. The tall man decided that for the two of them, and got up.

  ‘What happened to the other draftsman you used, the one who took more than his share?’

  The tall man turned his hard eyes on the American. ‘Inquest’s at Gloucester tomorrow, Mr Purcell

  Detective Inspector Jack Regan sat through the inquest and wondered what the hell he should tell the local nick. A murder squad had been set up at Gloucester under a Superintendent Rosswell. Rosswell was a small fat man who stuck his right hand in the centre flap of his jacket like Napoleon Bonaparte. But if Napoleon had had a mind as slow as Rosswell’s he would have just made lieutenant by Elba. Regan had spent two hours with him, from nine to eleven am. It had been like a year.