The Sweeney 01

by Ian Kennedy-Martin

  He couldn’t understand why, but for some reason he felt sorry for them. He had been in Canada one winter on a National Service training thing, and he was with some hunters who’d been shooting wolves for fun — practice for the real game they were after. The beasts were being picked off as they came into the circles of the camp fires, starving, driven crazy by the smell of food. And the hunters had shot at them monotonously through the night, and Regan had felt an odd compassion for the ugly creatures howling and dying in the snow. The IRA Provos group were animals. That was the official line at the Yard. Animals, killers. But to Regan, in one sense, they were genuine, and hopelessly courageous. For a moment he was almost moved to warn them, advise them, but he knew they had already gone too far in one direction where they couldn’t be saved. Their experience of crime and killing had hardened them to a point of no return, the point beyond trust. If he wandered down there now and chatted to them, told them that the police knew most of the details of the bank raid, they’d run for it, cancel that bank, and start to plan another robbery. They were self-defeated within the terms of the great political and humanitarian ideas that they wanted society to subscribe to. Nonetheless he felt a certain sadness, because suddenly, in the close-ups of the binoculars, they looked their ages, and some of them, like the girl, were young. They were just too bloody young and pitiable to be mixed up in this.

  He watched them load the thermic lance steel-cutting equipment into the van. He made a mental note of the bits and pieces as they loaded. Thermic lances, rods, step-up transformer, hydrogen and oxygen cylinders, asbestos face masks, normal steel-bar cutting equipment, assorted boxes, probably containing electrical equipment for re-circuiting alarm systems. It was almost as if they were parading each item for the blag specifically for the benefit of his binoculars, and in order for him to check the equipment.

  They set off about one. The van first, and then the three private cars. He swung his binoculars down the road and up to a leafy lane that would intersect the road. He saw a Morris Marina pull out and head down, three heavy-looking plainclothes policemen aboard. Not Sweeney faces — presumably Bomb Squad.

  Then he saw another squad car appear down the lane to the right of the farmhouse. The two police cars tucked in together, and began to tail the IRA procession at a discreet distance. They were all heading east. That meant Bath, and the London Road.

  Regan stood up. He could see movement at the back of the farmhouse and then half a dozen coppers appeared out of thin air and headed in towards the farmhouse. Well, he didn’t want to get mixed up in that. Nothing was going to come out of a search of the farm. Nothing but the necessary formality of police procedure.

  Next stop Middlesex Hospital and Declan Murray, the man who perhaps had the key to his theory about Carter’s report as a heap of crap -assuming that Declan Murray would talk, a ridiculous assumption. He wandered down the track, scattering pebbles, heading for his car.

  Lieutenant Ewing sat in the office at 300 Eastcheap and studied the Vice President of the bank. His name was Averil Harben. He was a New Yorker — and like all New York businessmen had been difficult to nail for a quick appointment. The entire resources of Scotland Yard had been mobilized. It was now Sunday and twelve pm. It had taken a full twelve hours to locate the man. His wife knew he had gone to Brussels on Saturday. The Yard knew that no one of that name had taken a scheduled air flight on Saturday in that direction. Next, they located some other employees of the bank and impressed upon them the seriousness of the situation. A man had told them the address of Harben’s mistress. They found Harben and the mistress in her flat in Chelsea. Harben had then insisted on checking with Head Office New York by telex. The directive giving Harben permission to co-operate fully with Ewing of SFPD, and the Yard, had taken two more hours.

  Midnight on Sunday in the deserted business area of the City of London, and Ewing watched Harben turn grey as he read Carter’s report.

  It took four minutes. At the end of it the American Bank Vice President said: ‘I don’t believe it.’

  Ewing studied him and wondered about it. ‘Would you show me the bank’s main safe, sir?’

  Harben led the way across the marble floors of the empty bank. There were a few blue lights giving just enough light to show the way. There was a short flight of steps ending in a basement foyer which was closed off at one end by a wall of horizontal chrome steel bars with a steel bar door set into it. Two yards behind the steel wall lay the safe.

  ‘You’re one hundred per cent sure that no one resembling the photo of James Purcell, the FBI photo I showed you, ever came to see you or anyone else in this bank?’

  ‘How can I speak for my personnel?’ the Vice President demanded stiffly. ‘I saw no one resembling the FBI photograph.’

  ‘But Purcell could have seen somebody else in this bank?’

  ‘I’m saying he could have,’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘My Assistant Vice President, Mr. Kreinhof.’

  ‘How do I locate him?’

  ‘You don’t.’ Mr Harben glowered. ‘He went off two days ago on his Spring camping holiday in the Adirondacks, as he does every year at this time. And running around in a camper truck with his kids, he will not be locatable.’

  Ewing shrugged that off, then pointed to the safe. ‘Could I see inside it?’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Why impossible?’

  The Vice President studied Ewing with an expression that suggested the American cop was being deliberately stupid. The expression also suggested that he felt that Ewing was in some way responsible for this projected bank robbery and that certainly he must take part blame for the appalling intrusion of privacy, in Scotland Yard tracking down and revealing a Chelsea mistress. ‘A security device prevents this safe from being opened before nine am tomorrow morning, even though myself and others are in possession of its combination.’ The Vice President’s voice was cold. ‘You say that IRA Provisionals have thermic lance equipment. There’s no protection against thermic lance, but my guess is it would take at least ten hours to cut through, first, the steel bar wall, and then into the safe itself.’

  ‘That sounds like overstaying a weekend in your bank?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In other words, if we left this bank now and these guys broke in, there’s not enough time for them to cut open the safe before your staff arrive in the morning?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘So maybe some other time soon they get their thermic lance together and rob the safe. What do they find? How much money is in the till?’

  ‘Obviously I’ve no idea of an up to the minute accounting.’

  ‘Roughly how much?

  Mr. Harben sighed. He was a precise man and he didn’t like rough calculations. ‘Many thousands of pounds sterling cash, say one hundred thousand. About thirty thousand dollars cash. And we hold customers’ stock certificates, mainly US, and convertible, to the tune of perhaps quarter of a million sterling.’

  Ewing’s head inclined slightly to one side as he studied the safe and thought about it. He also studied the clock over the safe that timed the mechanism to open the safe at nine am. He remembered he’d seen that clock more or less on every bank safe back home. ‘That’s a lot of money,’ he said softly. He’d done a quick calculation — it had come out at approximately three hundred and seventy thousand pounds sterling or a piece off a million US dollars even.

  ‘So if you’ve seen what you’ve come to see perhaps you’d be so good as to let me have the names of the personnel at New Scotland Yard that you’ve been dealing with. So I can liaise our security company with them.’

  Ewing gave the names and left the bank. It was twenty minutes past midnight. He found a cab and gave Tanya’s address. He’d reached her flat at a quarter to one and gave a tentative ring on the bell, loud enough to get her attention if she was awake, not loud enough to disturb her if she was asleep — or so he hoped. There was no response. He had asked the cab to wait. He got back
into it and headed for the hotel in Bayswater Road.

  He went up to his bedroom, took off his clothes and had a shower, then lay naked on top of the bed.

  He picked up the phone and called the Yard. He told Squad Office switchboard it was an emergency and they gave him Superintendent Maynon’s home number. He dialled the Surbiton number. Ewing had worked out why Declan Murray had not lied as they broke him but had told them the truth. Everything he had said was truthful; there was no denying that. He had told them the truth — exactly half of it. Jesus, why hadn’t they gone on and questioned him further? Why had they accepted a list of people, and the address of a bank, and decided that was it?

  ‘Maynon.’ A gruff tired voice on the end of the line.

  ‘Lieutenant Ewing, Mr Maynon. Apologies for the hour. Wondered if you would do something for me very urgently in connection with our case. Could you put me on to somebody who could tell me all about electricity in London — by which I mean phases, wattages, voltages, etcetera, etcetera?’

  There was a pause. It had nothing to do with Maynon’s surprise at the request. Stranger requests had been made to him before at even later hours. He was working it out. ‘I think there is someone who could help. Chap called Edward Terry. Very good friend. Used to be in the Min of Supply during the war. Chief Administrator now, the UK Grid System. He’d know most of that or he could refer you. Can I ask you what this is about?’

  Ewing took the phone away from his ear and looked at it and considered. He had come to England to do a job. He had needed the help of Scotland Yard. Now he didn’t need their help any more. For what he was about to do he positively didn’t want them around any more. ‘Some other time,’ he said. He put the phone down.

  Midnight. Regan strode the corridors on the fourth floor of Scotland Yard, wondering what would happen if the entire clientele of the Hilton Hotel were murdered in their beds now, policemen being a bit thin on the ground — it had taken him two hours to find where a bloody photo was filed. He banged his foot on the steel scuff-plate, and elbowed open the double doors of C11, Criminal Intelligence Department. ‘You Lawler?’

  A young sergeant dropped The Sporting Life over the floor in the move to his feet. ‘Yes, guv.’

  ‘Sergeant Lawler, you have somewhere in this museum of junk,’ he slapped his hand down on the top of one of fifty four-drawer steel filing cabinets, ‘the details of a caper, ref 202/71, entitled "Westminster Bank, Letchworth," subtitled "Failure to Rob Same". And although I’m in a rush I’m going to give you all of five seconds to find it.’

  It took Lawler twenty minutes.

  Regan opened the bulky file and slopped the contents over the top of the desk. He was not interested in the Westminster Bank raid, Letchworth, ref 202/71, or in the fact that it had failed. He was interested in a photograph he had seen once upon a time of what the villians left behind. This particular bunch of idiots had not realized that a thermic lance made a lot of smoke in the process of cutting through steel, and that this smoke must be ducted away, out of the back of a building. In the case of the Westminster Bank raid, Letchworth, ref 202/71, the smoke from the thermic lance work in the vault had got up the stairs, into the bank proper. An old age pensioner walking his cat had seen what he thought was the bank on fire at six am Monday morning. Within minutes, four large thugs were fleeing from the nozzles of the Letchworth Fire Brigade.

  They left all their equipment. The photo Regan had been searching for was the police photo of the complete thermic lance equipment lined up along the wall at the back of the bank. The Westminster Bank raid, Letchworth, ref 202/71, was in fact the first time that thermic lance equipment had been used by criminals to attempt to cut open a safe in England.

  ‘Is there anything else I can do for you, guv?’ Sergeant Lawler asked, a little peevish at the amount of activity he’d had to perform to find the file — it being well after midnight and usually, in C11, that was Sporting Life time.

  ‘Coffee,’ Regan ordered, his eyes concentrating on the photograph, ticking off the items that the Provos, and that girl, had been loading into the van at the ‘double stop’ farm.

  ‘The Tank’s closed, and the canteen’s closed, guv,’ the sergeant responded.

  ‘Obviously the Tank and the canteen’s closed. The coffee machine on the second floor.’

  ‘I happen to know, guv, that the coffee machine on the second floor’s bust.’

  Regan glared at the young sergeant as if he knew to whom to attribute the breaking of the coffee machine. Then he got up, picked up the empty Bank Raid file cover, put the photo in it, and headed for the door.

  ‘Sir, if you’re taking that photo, sir, could I have a signature for it?’ The young sergeant suddenly and correctly official.

  Regan halted, turned two cold blue eyes on the boy and let a silence fall and be felt. ‘If the appropriate people had put their appropriate signatures on that file and assigned it to the appropriate department, I would not have spent two hours looking for it. I’m Inspector Regan, Flying Squad. This photo will be returned to C.O.C.9 records tomorrow morning. And you gather the rest of that crap up, and rush it to C.9 where it belongs. Now.’

  Regan walked out.

  He chose the Maze Coffe Bar of the Kensington Garden Hotel. With the Rover 3500 wrecked at the farm, Len was now driving a Consul Estate from the Flying Squad spare car pool. He turned it into the kerb and braked. ‘How long, guv?’

  ‘An hour, two hours. I don’t know. You go home.’

  He saw Len take the Consul pointing off down Kensington High Street, and walked down into the basement restaurant.

  He looked at his watch. One forty-five am. He ordered eggs, bacon, brown hash and chips, coffee black, and a full pot of it. He’d been up twenty hours now. It wasn’t the physical exhaustion that worried him. It was its effect on his mental condition. The problems of the case were now ones that had to be worked out by brainpower. He knew, some intuitive feeling, that he’d done all the leg work necessary. Now it was down to shoving back the coffee, staying wide awake, alert, keeping the machinery of mind working flat out. He had to find the solution to a problem that Sergeant Carter, Haskins, Maynon didn’t even know existed.

  He had the photograph of the Letchworth fracas in the file on the table. He took it out, studied it again. Each individual item of the Westminster Bank blaggers’ equipment lined along the whitewashed wall at the back of the bank. The thermic lance itself, rubber hose, oxygen and hydrogen bottles; huge bottles, as if they were going to cut through the safe, then cut the building in half as an encore. Two pairs of Tuf boots, three pairs of asbestos mittens. Two asbestos helmets with silicate visors. Two suits of protective clothing. Step-up transformer, manual cutters, electrical equipment for re-circuiting alarm systems, jemmies, a hydraulic ram for recalcitrant wooden doors or windows. That was about it.

  On a previous occasion a significant move had been made in this case by crow-eyed Ewing of the Frisco Mounties noticing that a shirt worn by Declan Murray in a photo from the South of France would not have been sent home immediately after the photo session, to be laundered and stuck in a cupboard drawer; ergo the photo was old and misrepresented Declan Murray’s presence in that country. Now at the ‘Double Stop’ farmhouse this morning, Regan had watched those poor bastards lug their thermic lance stuff out to the van. And there was something wrong there. Something odd, like what was happening to him this second in the Maze Coffee Bar in the Kensington Garden Hotel.

  An adventure-seeking pouf was studying him. Regan’s eyes came up hard and studied the pouf. The pouf misread an invitation. Regan was sitting on a bar stool. There were twenty people in the all-night cafe, mostly pasty-faced kids fresh from alfresco sex in Hyde Park, grass in their hair. Regan was the only one at a bar stool. The rest, including the adventuring pouf, at the tables. The pouf got up, approached, and sat down four stools from Regan. He noticed that Regan’s and his own brand of cigarette coincided — Benson and Hedges. Regan had just tapped out one cigarette butt
in the ashtray in front of him.

  The pouf smiled on the coy side, and opened with an offering of his Benson and Hedges. ‘Smokey?’

  Regan looked at him expressionless. A deliberate, non-specific expression. ‘Are you a homosexual?’ he said quietly.

  The pouf — he was about forty — gave a moment’s flutter of eyelashes and imitation boyish smile. ‘I am, if you are,’ he said with a cheeky little toss of his shoulders.

  ‘I’m not,’ Regan said softly. He produced his wallet, opened it and showed his identity card. ‘I’m a very aggressive policeman. And I’m giving you two minutes to pay your bill, plus VAT, plus ten per cent service, and fuck off. Or something appalling and original is going to happen to you.’

  The pouf was already in retreat. He didn’t wait for the bill, dropped a five-pound note on the table from which he’d approached. Then he was grabbing a silver-knobbed malacca walking-cane, a fur-collared black coat and white gloves, and was off for the exit.

  White gloves. Regan looked at the photograph. White gloves. You cannot use thermic lance equipment without asbestos gloves. You cannot cut open steel bars, then cut through a safe without pulling away the off-cuts of white-hot metal, and you do that with asbestos gloves. Maybe three pairs of asbestos gloves: one for the cutter, the others for his mates. Regan remembered the procession of those lads from the farmhouse loading the van this morning. Every item of equipment corresponding to the Westminster Bank blaggers as per police photo. Except the gloves. He had seen no asbestos gloves. Why no gloves? It wasn’t logical to conclude that they would keep every item of equipment at that farm, except the gloves which they’d keep elsewhere. No, he must come up with an answer for that one. And that other question. Ewing had expressed it first, but it had already been nagging on some nerve at the back of Regan’s mind ever since the investigation started. Now it was coming forward and growing in significance: why import this very big draftsmen just to bust a bank in London?