Corridors of Death

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  He resisted the temptation to further introspection and began to read through the final brief for Harvey Nixon’s Question Time that afternoon. He hoped Nixon would recover sufficiently by then to offer a good account of himself. There were enough stories flying round about his exhibition on Monday, and none of them was charitable. Amiss bet there would be an unusually good turn-out of M.P.s this afternoon. You could normally count on there being no more than a handful for any uncontroversial session to do with a department generally regarded as boring. But they would be there in force today to see the performance at the Despatch Box of a man whose career seemed as good as finished, and who might even be a murderer. The newspapers hadn’t been able to give the list of suspects, of course, but those in the know had a pretty fair idea of who had been ruled out, and who were still receiving police attention.

  The brief suggested that Nixon could expect some problems that afternoon with Question 1, which concerned the government’s refusal to provide the money for a new glass-recycling plant in Wales. Amiss didn’t agree. He couldn’t see Nixon being attacked as hard on this one today as he might be at other times. The House of Commons was fundamentally a club—its members might privately enjoy each others’ discomfiture, but they wouldn’t publicly attack a man who was known to be in trouble. That would be bad form, and only the most inexperienced or nasty members would try it on. In any case, the figures that had won the case against the Welsh plant were incontrovertible, and, although Nixon could be a bit shaky on statistics, Parkinson would be there to brief him if he got into any difficulty. The next item, an apparently innocuous question about the chemical-recycling plant, was a different matter. Someone was sure to find an opportunity to raise the issue of Wells’s article. Still, the P.M. had promised a revised or reinforced decision by lunchtime, and Nixon and Sanders could sort out then what was to be said about it.

  Phil was clearly bored. He had decided to persecute Julia. He had raised his head from his book and was chanting ‘Julia, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Ju-li-a: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three on the teeth. Ju. Lee. A.’

  ‘He is adapting the opening lines from Lolita, Julia,’ said Amiss patiently. ‘Listen, you little sod, if you had the faintest idea how to pronounce the English language you would know that none of those syllables taps on the teeth. What are you doing reading, anyway? There must be plenty for you to do.’

  ‘You’re always sayin’ that, and there never is. Bad management, I call it. You’re not organizin’ your staff properly.’

  Amiss went over to look. As he had feared, Phil was absolutely right. All the mail had been logged or despatched. The filing had been done. Phil’s desk was clear. He looked round for something to criticize.

  ‘Have you checked that all Sir Nicholas’s official appointments have been transferred into Sanders’s diary? I only told him about the ones for this week.’

  ‘I couldn’t, could I? I told you it had disappeared.’

  ‘You couldn’t find Sir Nicholas’s diary?’

  ‘Nah. And don’t tell me I never looked properly. I told you, I looked in Sanders’s office and I’ve been through all the drawers and cabinets.’

  ‘Oh, go back to Lolita then.’

  ‘Wiv pleasure.’

  Where the hell was that diary? It didn’t matter that much. He should himself have a record of most of the important engagements in it. It was just that he hadn’t transferred any made on the previous Friday. He was sure he had put it back on Gladys’s desk when he had finished with Sanders. Maybe the police had taken it away. He must check with Milton, although he couldn’t imagine that they would have done that without telling him.

  The missing diary gnawed away at the back of his mind while he dealt with phone calls and the continual flow of pieces of paper. It was nearly midday before he began to think it might have some bearing on one or both of the murders. The entering down of Sir Nicholas’s appointments was Gladys’s prerogative. Indeed, it was a duty she carried out with great ceremony. She seemed to regard the diary as a kind of archive, and couldn’t be dissuaded from noting appointments even retrospectively when they were of no importance. Amiss had often felt irritated when he saw her writing down the time at which some colleague had dropped in on Sir Nicholas, but it wasn’t worth upsetting her about it. If she wanted to add to her burdens she might as well be left to it. Criticism only made her tearful.

  What could have been in it that would make anyone steal it?—for suddenly that seemed the most likely explanation for its disappearance. It could only be a record of someone having called on Sir Nicholas—someone who had reason to want the information suppressed. The murderer, in other words. How would he know she had entered the information? Because she would probably have asked him his name. (Even if she knew the name she might well have asked him how to spell it.) He’d have had to steal it as well as kill her.

  Amiss gave up all pretence of work. This had to be sorted out. It completely altered the official view on the reason for Gladys’s murder. If the diary really had been stolen, it must record a meeting between Sir Nicholas and the murderer at some time when Gladys was alone in the office. Could that be as early as Friday evening? No. More probably Monday morning. He went over to Julia.

  ‘I’m trying to get the staff rotas for the next few weeks worked out, Julia, and I’m not sure who’s been coming in early and staying late over the past week.’

  ‘Last week George was on early and Bernard was on late. This week Gladys was on early and I was on late. Not that she was early on Tuesday. I think she’d got confused. Phil’s doing early now.’

  The meeting must have been Monday morning, then. Gladys should in theory have been in at 8.15 to man the telephones until the others began to arrive from 9.00 onwards. Where did that get him? What was so significant about someone having been in to see Sir Nicholas early? Maybe there had been an argument? But that brought up the old problem of how the murderer could have known Gladys wouldn’t say anything about it until much later. Was it the mere fact of the meeting? That would point to two possibilities: either one of the suspects had lied about not seeing Sir Nicholas before IGGY, or the murderer was someone not on the existing list—someone who was in Embankment Tower and had the opportunity to kill him after IGGY, but whose name meant nothing to the police. Amiss’s heart bled for Milton at the very thought of the latter explanation. The first one seemed peculiar as well. Why should any of the suspects lie about having seen Sir Nicholas? It wouldn’t have made the evidence against them any more incriminating; they all had good official reasons to visit him. Unless they lied first and then remembered later that they could be found out.

  Amiss’s head was spinning. Wait. The security staff would have a record of any outsiders who had entered the building on Monday morning. That would look after any early visitors to Sir Nicholas except those with passes—Nixon, Wells and Parkinson. There was even a chance that it would be remembered if they had passed through reception at an unusually early hour. He’d have to try to get a message through to Milton to start an urgent check on the usual suspects and a new range of possibles. In the meantime he would see if he could find out about the insiders.

  Thursday Afternoon

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The worried girl who shared Wells’s outer office gave Milton a message to ring Romford. The hot news was already stale as far as Milton was concerned, but he put up a good pretence of modest surprise that his hunch about Sir Nicholas and the anonymous postcard had paid off. He cut short Romford’s rather plodding speculations about Sir Nicholas’s motivation and asked to be brought up-to-date on anything else. ‘Not much, sir. Inspector Gifford says that he couldn’t find out anything from Alfred Shaw that links him with Sir Nicholas. He’s off now interviewing that call-girl. Should be back about half-an-hour from now.’

  Milton thought rapidl
y. ‘Tell him to meet me in the pub across the road from the House of Commons. I’ll get there between half one and two.’

  ‘Right, sir. Oh, one other thing. Your wife rang up. She said it was urgent. You can get her at her office about one thirty.’

  It must be Amiss again, thought Milton as he rang off. This was becoming ludicrous. He wasn’t more than fifty yards away from Amiss’s office. He didn’t need to communicate with him by such a convoluted route. He muttered an excuse to the girl and went down to Amiss’s room. It was empty apart from a youth in his late teens, sporting an earring and ragged jeans, bent intently over the Financial Times. Milton was momentarily surprised at the incongruity of it. Then he spotted the legend on the tee-shirt. Of course, the court jester.

  ‘Is Mr Amiss available?’ he enquired politely.

  ‘Nah. ’E’s buggered off to lunch. ’E’ll be back about two but ’e’s goin’ out straight away. ’Oo shall I say wanted ’im?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Milton hastily. ‘It was nothing of importance.’ So I’ll bugger off out of it.

  He returned to Wells’s office and put Amiss out of his mind. He’d have time to ring Ann before he saw Gifford in the pub. Going straight through to the modest inner sanctum, he found Wells looking a shade defiant.

  ‘Yes, Superintendent? How can I help you?’

  ‘By telling me with no more evasion or half-truths exactly what passed between you and Sir Nicholas between last Friday and his murder.’

  ‘Come now, Superintendent. There’s no need to put it like that. I answered all your questions frankly. I didn’t see any reason to tell you things that didn’t seem relevant.’

  ‘I am sick and tired of being told what is relevant or irrelevant to my job. I want to know what happened between you over that misleading article you published yesterday, and I want to know why you concealed information which might be vital to police enquiries. Are you going to tell me everything now, or am I going to have to ask you to come over to the Yard for a more formal interrogation?’

  ‘Well, of course I’ll help you now, Superintendent. I can’t possibly come over to the Yard. I’ve got to be in the House this afternoon.’

  ‘You had better get one thing very clear, Mr Wells. You will come with me unless I am satisfied that you have told me all I want to know. If you think you can impress me by talking grandiosely about your duties as a junior minister or as an M.P. you are mistaken. You wouldn’t be the first of them to have been taken into custody.’

  Milton observed Wells’s shocked silence with satisfaction. There was nothing like a low blow for bringing a bully to heel.

  Wells began to talk. He was almost babbling. His story was circumstantially the same as Douglas Sanders’s. The only ­differences were those of emphasis. Wells’s account of his own behaviour was of a fighter for the just cause being blocked at every turn by the weak, the conservative or the naturally obstructive. He had, though, believed that his persuasiveness and the superiority of his argument would triumph. Harvey Nixon had told him that he wouldn’t fight for the loan, but Wells had been sure that his own mates would carry the day in Cabinet. Sir Nicholas had dropped the odd remark to him suggesting that the decision was likely to go against the department, and had even congratulated Wells on the way in which he had run his campaign.

  ‘But Sir Nicholas wasn’t on your side, was he? You said you and he didn’t get on well.’

  ‘We weren’t on the same side, but he was very friendly for a change over this whole business. Said he saw my point and was very impressed by my tactics. That was why I believed him when he said he would approve my article even though Nixon wouldn’t like it.’

  Milton gazed open-mouthed at Wells. Could even the most ambitious fool believe that a sane Permanent Secretary would urge a junior minister to boast publicly that he had won a battle against his own Secretary of State and his own department? Amiss had impressed on him how important loyalty was supposed to be.

  ‘Surely that was an inconceivably disloyal thing for a civil servant to do to his minister?’

  ‘Well, Sir Nicholas said that Nixon was such a lousy Secretary of State he had it coming.’

  ‘And you seriously believed him?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I wanted to,’ said Wells with sudden honesty.

  ‘Weren’t you afraid of losing your job?’

  ‘No. There’s an election coming up reasonably soon and my main concern is to keep my seat. That article would have swung it.’

  ‘You didn’t worry about how Mr Nixon—or the Prime Minister for that matter—would have felt about it?’

  ‘Why should I? They’re both on their way out. I can afford to wait a couple of years for a ministerial job.’

  Milton suddenly realized why Wells had told no one the article was coming out.

  ‘You let that article appear yesterday without notifying your colleagues because you wanted to embarrass them?’

  ‘That’s right. They’re having to reconsider the decision right now. If it goes my way, I win. If it goes against me, I win too, by resigning in protest at having been misled. I won’t have any trouble about getting the local electors to see it as a bureaucrats’ botch-up. If the civil service had known on Monday that the article was going to appear they’d have been able to pre-empt me.’

  Of all the corrupt little weasels Milton had come across, this one took the biscuit. How was it possible for anyone to think like this and still make it in politics?

  ‘I understand your recent actions now.’ He was damned if he was going to call this Judas ‘sir’. ‘However, local information is that you tried on Monday afternoon to get the article withdrawn.’

  ‘Yes. I did. I wasn’t thinking clearly then. I admit I was in a bit of a panic. But when I discovered it was too late, I decided I had better turn the whole business to my advantage. That’s what being a good politician is all about, you know.’

  Milton wondered if Wells was showing his contempt in displaying himself as openly as this to someone who couldn’t affect his career. He thought not. Wells probably thought he would be impressed. He hoped the next question would wipe the condescending expression off his face.

  ‘Your panic must have been considerable when you heard the news on Monday morning. Your anger must have been even greater since it led you to kill Sir Nicholas.’

  Wells’s face was sagging, all right, but whether with surprise or fear Milton couldn’t tell.

  ‘You can’t believe that. You haven’t the faintest shred of evidence for it. Nixon had just as much reason to be furious with Sir Nicholas.’

  ‘I’m not talking about Mr Nixon. I’m talking about you. You had a first-class motive. In fact you had three, which puts you well ahead of the field.’

  It was fear now, Milton was pleased to observe.

  ‘Look, Superintendent. You’re getting this all wrong. Look at it from my point of view. Sir Nicholas had put me in an embarrassing position by having called in Nixon to take my place at the Industry and Government Group meeting. He had also upset my wife. Neither of those things were more than minor irritants. I admit that I was upset when I discovered he had misled me over the article, but killing him wouldn’t have made any difference. He would have got into trouble over it too.’

  ‘He could have denied seeing it.’

  ‘I didn’t think of that.’

  I wonder how smart this bloke really is. Bluff, double-bluff, counter-bluff, subterfuge, self-deception. ‘When did he tell you that he had misled you?’

  ‘Just before the meeting began. I had just been turned out of my seat at the conference table to make way for Nixon when Sir Nicholas whispered to me.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  Wells looked unhappy. ‘If I tell you the truth you’ll probably think it helps the case against me.’

  ‘I
f you don’t tell me the truth I can assure you it will help the case against you far more. I should point out, too, that Sir Nicholas may have been overheard, and I intend to make a most thorough investigation of that possibility. Stop prevaricating and tell me now, exactly what he said.’

  Wells was wriggling with embarrassment. ‘He said “A letter has just gone to Chemical Recycling telling them that the Cabinet has rejected their application. Your nasty little career will be finished when your article appears.”’

  For the first time, Milton felt an upsurge of admiration—almost liking—for Sir Nicholas. The man who had done this to Wells couldn’t be all bad.

  ‘Did you speak to him again?’

  ‘No, Superintendent. I admit I went looking for him after the meeting, but I couldn’t see him in the lavatory or the corridor. I thought he must have left. I swear I didn’t kill him.’

  Milton gave up. He wasn’t going to break Wells now. It would take more evidence or someone new to do that. As he passed through the outer office he made a call to Ann. ‘Deep Throat was on again,’ she said. ‘He says it’s important you try to see him in the House of Commons this afternoon. He’ll be with the Secretary of State’s briefing team.’

  ‘Did he tell you what it was about?’

  ‘No, he was going to, but I think someone came into the room. He couldn’t have had any other reason for saying “Sorry I can’t talk any more, darling, but I’ve got to rush.”’