ARCHANGEL HAWTHORNE (A Thriller)

by D. M. Mitchell

  Hawthorne frowned. ‘What about my future?’

  Lloyd stared directly at Hawthorne. ‘It’s perhaps time you considered retiring.’

  ‘Retiring?’ he said in a blast of air. ‘I’m not retiring!’

  ‘How old are you, Hawthorne? Fifty? Fifty-one? You’ve got many years of service under your belt, a great career to look back on. I feel it’s time you thought about ending on a high and finding something else less stressful to do.’

  ‘Are you ruddy joking, sir?’ he returned, rising from his seat.

  ‘Sit down, Hawthorne,’ Lloyd said firmly.

  The DCI slowly lowered himself onto the chair. ‘You can’t be serious? This job is all I’ve got. It’s my world.’

  ‘And that’s the problem, Hawthorne. You need something else.’

  ‘Like hell I do. I’m not retiring, and that’s that. I’ve still got lots to do out there.’

  Lloyd’s eyes steeled. ‘You haven’t got a choice, Hawthorne. The wheels are already in motion.’

  Hawthorne opened his mouth, but he was momentarily speechless. He coughed and dug out words. ‘I’ll object,’ he said.

  ‘You do that. It won’t make the slightest difference. I’ve made my decision.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘maybe I have been a bit off-kilter lately. And yes, I need a fresh change of clothes. I’m cutting back on the booze, too. I’m still good for a long time yet.’

  ‘You think so?’ said Superintendent Lloyd. ‘Have you checked the mirror of late? Tell me you’re sleeping nights.’

  ‘I’m sleeping nights.’

  ‘Like hell you are, Hawthorne. Why can’t you admit it? You’re ill.’

  Hawthorne straightened his shoulders. ‘I’m Ruddy well not, sir! Fit as a butcher’s dog!’

  ‘I don’t mean physically.’

  Hawthorne raised his brows. ‘You calling me nuts, sir? That’s totally unjustified.’

  ‘No, not nuts. But you’re not thinking straight. You’re not acting straight. And it’s affecting your work. You’re like a bloody bull in a china shop. A sad remnant of the shoot-first brigade.’

  ‘A sad… Christ, I do what I do because I only want to get results, sir! I get results!’

  ‘The results you’d like and what is demanded of the case are not always the same thing, Hawthorne.’ He steepled his fingers. ‘I’ve said my piece, Hawthorne. There’s nothing more to say. You’d better get used to the idea. Go borrow a book from the library on how to grow roses or make wine.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be a joke, sir, because it isn’t funny?’

  ‘Do I look like I’m joking, Hawthorne?’ Superintendent Lloyd replied evenly. ‘Go away, think about things.’

  Hawthorne was about to bellow out his protest, but he choked it back. He turned and left the superintendent’s office, simmering inside, trying to come to terms with what he’d been told.

  He wandered vacantly into the office. Inspector Fraser called him over. The place was buzzing with activity, phones ringing, the steady hum of conversations being held, heads bent studiously to paperwork, the rattle of a typewriter, a laugh as someone shared a dirty joke, and overall the smell of cigarette smoke baked into the very fabric of the building. Hawthorne had never contemplated he could lose it all. He felt as if he was in a state of shock.

  ‘Everything all right, sir?’ said Fraser, sitting on the edge of his desk.

  ‘Eh?’ Hawthorne said. ‘Yeah, sure. Don’t sit on the edge of the bloody desk, Fraser,’ he snapped. ‘It looks so ruddy untidy and unprofessional. It’s not meant to take your arse – that’s what chairs and lavatory seats are for. What have you got for me?’

  He held out a sheet of paper. ‘A number of things. First, I managed to interview Grainger’s night watchman. Poor fella’s still in a bad way but at least he can talk now. He says he did his rounds, as usual, and passed by the padlocked gate to the yard. The yard’s always all but empty so he says he usually gives it a cursory glance. On the night of the robbery, he notices the padlock is brand new. Nobody told him they were going to replace it, so he checks his bunch of keys to see if he’s got one to fit, just in case he needs it some time in the future, and he can’t find one. He thinks nothing of it, but before he leaves, he sees – or thinks he sees – a flash of light at the door of the old storehouse. Curious, he goes back into the factory and makes his way to the yard by another door – the one we found open. He goes to the storehouse and finds the storehouse door is unlocked and ajar. Just as he opens it to check it out, he’s bashed on the head and the next thing he knows, he’s waking up in one of the outside loos. He’s been too badly beaten up to have been in on the act, sir.’

  Hawthorne stroked his nose thoughtfully. ‘The thieves cut off the old padlock and replaced it with one of their own, locking the gates so that nobody would think it had been tampered with.’ He nodded. ‘You’re right: the old man’s not got anything to do with this. But I still think there had to be insider help. What else have you got?’

  ‘We checked all those people known to the police who might have had the skills to break into those safes. We came up with two home-grown suspects, but it’s a bit of a dead-end, I’m afraid.’

  Hawthorne read the names out aloud: ‘William Foster – yeah, I know about our Willie; Reg Carter.’

  ‘Foster’s doing time. Reg Carter we haven’t been able to trace yet, but from all accounts he’s been trying to go straight since coming out of prison three years ago.’

  ‘I’ve heard that tale before,’ grumbled Hawthorne. ‘Find Carter and get someone to grill him, though I’m not convinced he’s had anything to do with it. My feeling is that the job was so specialist it needed someone drafting in from outside the area.’

  ‘Already ahead of you, sir. I checked with my colleagues in the Met and told them about the toy lead angel we found in one of the safes. It’s like I thought, it’s a calling-card. The Met had a spate of robberies from safes in which they found a similar toy angel. They caught the man eventually. His name was Bruno Abramco, but his middle name was Angelo – it means angel.’

  ‘I’m not that thick, Fraser. What do we know about this Abramco?’

  ‘Italian national, spent time in a PoW camp in Wales during the war…’ He read from a piece of paper: ‘Llanddarog camp in Carmarthenshire, about seven or eight miles east of Carmarthen. He settled in Wales after it was all over, meeting and marrying a local woman in 1949, abandoning her and his two kids five years later, which is when he left his calling-card – a toy lead angel – at a spate of robberies in London before being caught for a bank job in Leicester. He did time for it. A nasty character, from all accounts.’

  ‘Bring the Eyetie in.’

  ‘Would if I could. He went back to Italy four years ago, where he died of liver failure, apparently.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘That’s what the Met told me.’

  ‘Nobody else we can come up with?’

  Fraser shook his head. ‘No one we know with those skills. Those safes were sophisticated buggers and there aren’t many we know who would be able to crack them. We’ve drawn a blank, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, some ruddy devil managed to crack them, and they knew about Abramco’s calling-card, too. Cheeky bleeders. What else have you got for me?’

  Fraser grinned. ‘That ten-shilling note which was left in the Grainger Forges’ safe, the one you asked me to check the serial number of…’

  ‘Well, don’t be so ruddy dramatic and keep me in suspense. What have you come up with?’

  ‘Seems the note was part of a haul taken from a wages snatch in Leeds four months ago. Ten thousand pounds. It’s the first trace of the cash we’ve managed to come across. How’d you know the note was suspicious?’

  Hawthorne glanced at the young man. He tapped his head with a thick grubby finger. ‘I didn’t. I just had a hunch.’

  ‘Another hunch? So what’s it doing in Grainger Forges’ safe?’

  ‘You’ve got to be
able to read people in this job, Fraser. I read Arnold Grainger like a book.’

  ‘The managing director?’ said Fraser.

  ‘Shifty bugger if ever I saw one. Like a worm squirming on a line.’

  ‘I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary…’

  ‘Honestly, Fraser, I despair at the future of the force with imbeciles like you coming on board. First rule, don’t trust anyone. Second rule, what appears without doubt to be the truth is probably a lie. We’ll pay Grainger another visit.’ He fell thoughtful. ‘I’ve got to see a man about a dog, first.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Two dogs to be precise.’

  ‘You want me to come along?’

  Hawthorne shook his head. ‘Stay here and dig up whatever you can on Abramco.’

  ‘I told you he was dead.’

  ‘I heard you.’

  ‘So you think someone could be imitating him?’

  ‘You catch on fast, Fraser, don’t you?’

  The door to the office burst open and two of Hawthorne’s men came in. They were laughing, but stifled their mirth on seeing their senior officer staring daggers at them across the busy room.

  ‘Sir,’ one of them said, choking back a grin. ‘We’ve got the results on the prints we found on those stout bottles left behind at Grainger Forges by the thieves.’

  ‘What’s so damn funny?’ said Hawthorne. ‘Life’s too ruddy serious to be funny.’

  ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ said the officer, glancing at his companion.

  Hawthorne folded his arms. ‘Spit it out, man.’

  ‘They belong to you! Your fingerprints are on every bottle!’

  The DCI stared directly at the two men, his expression unwavering. ‘About time. What took you morons so long? I guessed all along they were mine.’

  Spud watched closely as Callum Baxter carefully counted out money and handed it to him. As Spud fed it all into a large sack, he looked at all the many mail sacks sitting on a straw-covered floor and bulging with notes. The police were looking for a quarter of a million pounds – a large amount in itself – but he knew the police were unaware that the haul had been far more. Close to half a million. It made his mouth water just thinking about it. His share – twenty-thousand – would hardly make a dent in it, but it was more money than he could ever dream of. It would set him up for life.

  ‘That’s the last of it,’ said Callum, giving Spud a brick-like wad of bound banknotes.

  Spud stashed it away in his sack. ‘Thanks, Callum,’ he said, looking up the ladder to the open trapdoor. Jimmy Baxter’s face peered down, like a white full moon.

  ‘Buy yourself a lot of tarts with that,’ Jimmy called down.

  ‘Gonna get me a pub somewhere,’ Spud said. ‘Always wanted to run my own pub.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand with that sack,’ said Callum, and the pair heaved the sack up the ladder.

  As Callum slammed the trap door lid down and snapped the padlock into place, Jimmy leaned against the cab of the truck parked in the barn. ‘Callum’s arranged for me to take you to see his contact. He’ll get you away safely. Are you ready?’

  Spud nodded. ‘Listen, Callum, I just wanted to thank you…’

  Callum waved it away. ‘Don’t get caught,’ he said. ‘And if you do, you never saw me or Jimmy here.’

  ‘I won’t. I promise.’

  ‘Let me put that in the back for you, Spud,’ said Jimmy, hauling the heavy sack to the rear of the truck. He lifted the tarpaulin and grunted as he stowed it away. ‘Twenty thousand sure weighs a lot,’ he said, coming back to the cab and climbing inside. ‘Hurry up, Spud, it’s gonna rain and I hate the bloody rain.’

  Grinning with relief, Spud clambered up beside Jimmy, who gunned the engine. It sounded loud and guttural within the confines of the barn. Callum swung the barn doors open. He shouted up to the cab.

  ‘Take the back route, remember, and be careful. The one I marked on the map.’

  Spud nodded his goodbye and faced front. Jimmy crashed the gear stick into first and it gave a strident grating sound in protest. The truck trundled into the farmyard.

  Without giving it a second glance, Callum strode to the farmhouse, the truck making its slow way out of the gates and down the dirt track.

  They’d travelled perhaps twenty minutes, Spud lazily thinking what he might first do with his money, feeling dizzy with excitement and relief and conveniently forgetting what was about to happen to the young woman, when Jimmy applied the brakes.

  ‘What’re we stopping for?’ said Spud. There was deep woodland to his right, the hillside dropping away steeply to his left.

  ‘I need a piss,’ said Jimmy, opening the cab door.

  ‘Didn’t you go before we left?’

  ‘When a man needs to piss, he pisses,’ he said.

  Spud heard the sound of Jimmy’s boots clumping on the dirt outside. He thought about his new pub. In Scotland, maybe, far away where nobody would know him. By the side of a loch somewhere. The sound of lapping water…

  Time passed and there was no sign of Jimmy.

  ‘Hey, Jimmy, where the devil are you?’ he called out of the window he’d wound down. ‘Come on, how long does it take you to piss?’

  With a grunt of frustration, Spud got out of the cab and looked down the road. Jimmy was nowhere to be seen. Alarm started to nag at him. He walked cautiously to the rear of the truck. The flaps of the tarpaulin were shivering in the breeze. Spud wondered why they hadn’t been tied down, and he lifted up the cover.

  He stared straight into the barrel of a pistol, held at arm’s length by Angelo Abramco. Jimmy was sitting beside the Italian, smoking a cigarette. Spud gave a high-pitched screech and turned to run.

  Abramco shot Spud in the back and the man fell down to the road, groaning. Slowly, almost lazily, Abramco climbed out of the truck and looked down at Spud. The wounded man was trying to crawl away, snivelling.

  Without his face registering a single emotion, Abramco aimed the pistol at Spud’s head and pulled the trigger.

  ‘Bingo!’ said Jimmy, clapping. ‘But I wouldn’t have needed two bullets to do the job.’

  ‘Shut up your face, Jimmy. You know nothing about it.’ He wiped a spot of blood from his cheek. ‘I need help getting him over there.’

  Jimmy laughed and jumped out onto the road, taking Spud’s lifeless legs. ‘Where?’

  ‘We’ll dump him in the woods,’ said Abramco, nodding to a line of red conifers. ‘Like Callum told us.’

  They dragged him over the rough ground, leaving a bloody trail behind.

  ‘What about that?’ said Jimmy, nodding to the scarlet, ribbon-like line.

  ‘Nobody come here,’ said Abramco. ‘The rain will wash it all away.’

  Dumping him under the trees, Jimmy stared down at the corpse. ‘I ought to say a few words.’

  Abramco looked at the young man with puzzlement.

  ‘You’re a bloody tosser!’ said Jimmy, laughing. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

  ‘Are you Mr Armitage? Mr Alexander Armitage?’

  Alexander Armitage hadn’t expected to see a police constable standing on his front doorstep. He was one of those people for whom the very presence of police officers causes them to feel guilty. And to have one on your doorstep in a very smart suburb of Cheltenham was doubly troubling.

  ‘That’s right. I’m Alexander Armitage. Is there anything wrong, officer?’

  ‘Can I step inside a few minutes, sir?’ said the fresh-faced constable. ‘I won’t keep you.’

  ‘By all means,’ he replied, opening the door wider and stepping aside to let the constable over the threshold.

  ‘Not very nice weather at the moment,’ said the officer, taking off his helmet and placing it carefully on top of a bureau in the hall. As he said it, he looked around him, as if assessing the house.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Armitage, unconsciously straightening his jacket and arranging the knot of his tie.

  The police
constable took out a notebook and flicked through the pages. ‘Are you the owner of a 1958 light-blue Ford Anglia, registration number 292GCR?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. That’s my car. I bought it only a few months ago. Why? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Do you know where it is, sir?’ he said, closing the notebook.

  ‘Of course, it’s in Wales.’

  ‘Why is it in Wales, sir?’

  Armitage relaxed a little. ‘My son-in-law and daughter borrowed it for a fortnight. They’re on honeymoon there.’

  ‘Newlyweds,’ said the officer, nodding.

  ‘Is there anything wrong?’

  ‘Whereabouts in Wales are they staying, Mr Armitage?’

  ‘They’re touring. But Trudy – that’s my daughter – telephoned from an inn at which they’re staying. I can’t remember how to pronounce the place…’

  ‘Llangynidr?’

  ‘That’s right. They were staying at the Coach and Horses.’ A sudden dread overcame Armitage. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there? Nothing’s happened to my daughter, has it? Oh God, there’s been a traffic accident!’ He felt faint and put a hand to his mouth.

  ‘There hasn’t been an accident, sir. The car’s perfectly fine. We’ve been contacted by the Carmarthenshire Constabulary trying to locate the owner of a car that’s apparently been abandoned in front of a farmer’s gate in the Brecon Beacons.’

  ‘Abandoned? What do you mean? They wouldn’t have abandoned it. There’s been some kind of mistake. Are you certain you have the right registration?’

  ‘It’s the right registration, sir,’ said the constable. ‘So your son-in-law borrowed the vehicle.’

  ‘That’s right. He hasn’t got a car of his own just yet, and as I was on holiday at the same time as their honeymoon and didn’t need it for work, I said they could have the car. Save them having to hire one… Look, what do you mean abandoned? Where are they, my daughter and son-in-law?’