Their Own Game
Page 52
***
Next morning, Bill Clayton was in the office early. He hadn’t slept a lot, if he was honest. Sergeant Wilson was already there. He flipped his hat across the room for it to land, as usual, on the hat-stand.
“Morning, sir,” said Wilson. “I see you’re more like your old self this morning.”
“Morning, sergeant,” he responded. “You’re in early – anything wrong?”
“Not really. I just couldn’t sleep, for some reason.”
“Neither could I, and probably for the same reason.”
“Commander Marsden left a message on the answer phone. He’ll be in about mid-morning, but is on his mobile if you want him. Otherwise, nothing much has happened since you left last night.”
“Nothing much has happened?” he grinned, “You’re joking! But we’d better work out what to do about Vaughan, so come in.”
“There’s coffee on if you want some.”
“Please. Bring yours with you, too.”
She sat across the desk from him, and there was the briefest of pauses as they both remembered how different it was last night. Clayton broke the silence.
“We agreed that we’d try to sort out the Vaughan puzzle on our own for the time being, until we are sure who else could be trusted with the information we’ve got. Our major need is for more information about the man, but there’s no one I dare ask at the moment. It’s his life-style as much as anything else we need to look into, and his background, to see if we can find any kind of motive for his wanting to help the IRA. In any other circumstances, that would mean mail intercepts, phone taps, a look at his bank balance, investments, and so on. But none of that is available to us at present, because there’s no one we trust enough to ask for it to be laid on.”
“So we do it without asking,” said Catherine Wilson.
“Easier said than done. We need help, not least because we can’t both go swanning off at the same time. Someone’s got to be here.”
“What we really need is to get into his flat, or wherever he lives,” said Wilson.
“So far as I know, he has a flat near Canary Warf – Limehouse, I think – which he uses during the week, and a house in the Home Counties somewhere. His wife rarely uses the London flat, as she can drive to Town when she needs to.”
“Perfect,” said the Sergeant. “We’ll set a honey trap for him. I can do that.”
“I’ll not agree to that for one minute,” said Bill Clayton.
“Don’t start being protective already,” said Wilson. “I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can, but I still don’t like the idea one bit.”
“I certainly wouldn’t let it get out of hand, so stop worrying,” said Catherine Wilson. “I can’t think of a better way of getting into his flat, unless you want to go along with a battering ram or something. This way it’s legal, and I only need to be there long enough to set up a few bugs, find his bank statements and so. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of visits, and if I can get my hands on his keys, I can let myself in for the second one, and he won’t even be there.”
Bill Clayton sighed.
“I suppose I’ve no choice, really, but I don’t like it. Unless something better occurs to me, we’ll do it your way, but not quite yet. I need to do some more research first, and then I’ll try to fix for the three of us to meet.”
“What sort of research?” asked Wilson.
“The note from Doyle said Vaughan was a fund raiser. I would like to know how. Did he have his hand in the Bank of England till in some way, like Jim Farlow?”
“Good point,” said Wilson.
“And I want to find out if all the IRA money was actually transferred to the special HMG account from the banks Farlow raided, or whether some of it was creamed off by Vaughan before it got there.”
“Only Vaughan will know that, surely, and you can’t ask him.”
“No, but I could ask the PM to find out from the Treasury. We know roughly what was in most of the accounts, so we should be able to check.”
Captain Brian Foley appeared. “You’re in early – anything happening?” he asked.
“Not really,” replied Clayton. “Just thinking of a few loose ends that we should tie up. There’s one I’d like you to tackle, if you would.”
“Of course.”
“You know the list of bank accounts which we got from Sean Doyle was in an old envelope addressed to my uncle, Edward Benbow, who was shot and killed a week or so ago. Could you get on to the Sussex police, and see how their murder enquiry is going? I’m interested to know if they’ve turned up any clues yet – motive, suspects, that sort of thing.”
“I’ll get on to it this morning,” said Foley. “Anything else?”
“Not really, although I think I feel another meeting with the Prime Minister coming on soon. And other coffee please, Sergeant Wilson.”
***