A Spider in the Cup

by Barbara Cleverly

  THE RIVER POLICEMAN was waiting for him, quivering with suppressed excitement, at reception when Orford got back to the Yard.

  “Got him, sir! I’ve identified your dead sailor.”

  He took his notebook from his pocket. “I nipped down the river on one of our launches and visited the Empire Memorial Hall over in Limehouse. British Sailors Society. It’s a rescue mission for seafarers who’re down on their luck and need a billet for the night. They’ve got two hundred and twenty cabins and they’re all full every night. So full they have to turn men away. The bloke on reception thought he recognised him from the corpse photo but he couldn’t swear to it. Beards and earrings not uncommon there. If it’s who they think he is, he’d spent a week with them on being kicked out of the navy. Not for bad behaviour he thinks. He was a quiet customer. Not a drinker and he gave them no trouble. Never tried to smuggle a tart in. Just another bit of naval flotsam and jetsam. Turned off because of the cuts. Anyhow, his allotted time ran out at the hostel and he had to make room for someone else. He came back again a week later. Same thing. He was getting to be a regular. They had no idea where he went on his off days. But they did have a name for him and the name of his last ship.” He handed over a notebook and pointed to a page. “It’s all there, sir, with dates.”

  “Well thanks a lot, Eddie. We can nail this one then. We’ll get his details from the Admiralty now we know who we’re talking about. Poor bloke. Not a nice way to end your days. Some vicious sod broke his neck they say.”

  “Thought as much.”

  Orford looked down at the book in his hand and looked again. He burst out laughing. “Well, well! Up yours, Dante! And stuff me! Able Seaman Absalom Hope, eh? I feel we’ve been introduced.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Joe’s landlord eyed the ringing telephone with disfavour. Seven o’clock on a Saturday? Inspector Alfred Jenkins (Retired) was expecting his daughter-in-law to arrive with her two little boys any minute to do his weekly scrub and polish while he played games with his grandsons. He’d got two new Dinky cars to give them. Latest models. That was how his Saturday mornings were spent and he didn’t welcome any disruption.

  But then it occurred to Alfred that it might be a call from his tenant and he hurried to pick up the receiver. Joe hadn’t come home last night. Not an unusual occurrence; the poor bloke led a demanding professional life and in his private life—well, he was no hermit, was the politest way of putting it. Alfred had got used to his upstairs tenant rolling home at a late hour doing a fair imitation of Berlington Bertie, reeking of brandy, tie askew and lipstick on his cheek. He’d calmed down a bit since that girl had got her claws into him. The three o’clock in the morning appearances had been less frequent and the lipstick seemed to have changed colour.

  Odd though. Joe usually warned him when he was going to be away from home overnight. He’d snatch up the weekend bag he always kept at the ready behind his door and go whistling off. He was fanatical about his security and Alfred enjoyed playing the role of guard dog. When he was at home, no one got near his young tenant, and Alfred was usually at home. A tough and uncompromising man, the scars of the bullet wounds that had brought about his early retirement from the Met were not visible but somehow they were perceptible to those who needed to be intimidated. He was very familiar with police life and London crime. He knew most villains respected the sanctity of a copper’s home life in an old-fashioned way, but at the elevated level where Sandilands worked, the villains were of a different order. Alfred suspected that the assistant commissioner’s name appeared, scrawled in chalk, on certain high security cell walls in Wormwood Scrubs, and probably topped lists inked in a scholarly hand into the back of leather-bound, gold-clasped diaries on desks in Westminster.

  He picked up the receiver and gave no more than the exchange number. He heard the reassuring sound of a woman’s voice. Not lovely Lydia and not that cocky little Dorcas Joe was entangled with. The stranger asked if she was speaking to the janitor. A snooty woman with a plum in her mouth. Confident. Middle-aged. He didn’t much like the sound of her so he gave her his rank: “Detective Inspector Jenkins, retired, here, madam.”

  “Oh, even better! Jenkins! Just the man I wanted! Glad to catch you, Inspector. This must be the assistant commissioner’s landlord I’ve got?”

  “Yes, madam. And whom have I got?” he asked with an hauteur that suggested he objected to an assumption of intimacy with a female stranger.

  There was tinkling laughter as she picked this up and: “So sorry! This is Phoebe Snow. Assistant Commander Sandilands’ private secretary. I’m ringing from the Yard.”

  “Well, you’re unlucky today, Miss Snow. I’ve no idea where he is. I just know he’s not at—”

  “I know he’s not at home,” she interrupted crossly. “That’s the problem. He’s not here either and he was meant to be. Someone’s mightily displeased, you can tell him when he surfaces again. I wasn’t able to warn him when he rang in just now. I’m not alone in the office,” she added mysteriously in a low voice. Someone in the background cleared his throat. “He wants me to pick up some overnight things and have them brought down for him. I have a list of items he needs so if you’ll just let me into his apartment in … say … half an hour, I’d be most grateful. If by any chance I get caught up here—I’ll send a chap down. That’ll be … hang on a tick …” She referred to someone else in the office and then: “Kerry Onslow can do it. Be sure to ask to see his warrant card. The boss is fanatical about security, you know. Got that? Half an hour.”

  Jenkins went up to Joe’s flat in the lift, unlocked and found the weekend bag standing at the ready in its usual place. He checked the leather luggage label that was always attached to the handle. His sister’s address in Surrey was the one currently on show there. It usually was. Left over from last time. His home from home. Thoughtfully, Jenkins untied it and slipped it into his pocket. He locked the door firmly behind him and went back downstairs.

  “May I speak to Assistant Commissioner Sandilands if he’s with you?” he asked Marcus’s butler a minute later. “Urgent. It’s his landlord here in Chelsea. Name of Jenkins.”

  “Hello, Alfred, Joe here. You catch us still at the breakfast table. Got a bit of trouble have you?”

  Joe listened with increasing alarm to an account of Alfred’s phone call and his reaction to it.

  “First—you were quite right to be wary. My secretary is indeed Phoebe Snow but she’s never at the Yard on a Saturday and she has a delightful Welsh voice which no one would describe as ‘plummy.’ So, effectively, you’ll find yourself greeting a stranger in about twenty minutes. A stranger? What’s the betting they send their Mr. Onslow? Mr. Onslow will be expecting—after a quick, token, matey flash of a forged warrant card—to be shown into my room to rummage about getting together some of my possessions from an imaginary list. And what’s the betting he won’t be by himself? Look—I don’t want them anywhere near my room. But—above all—I don’t want them anywhere near you and your family. I know your circumstances on a Saturday. These aren’t East End thugs, hired round the back of the Fighting Cock in Seven Dials for twopence ha’penny; they’re certainly international no-goods, probably with protection at a diplomatic level and possibly armed. They’ve killed already and I have their next target down here with me. I want you and your family to move out. That’s an order, Alf, and I want it executed in the next ten minutes. This is the Assistant Commissioner speaking, not your friend and tenant.”

  “Think on, Joe. If I stick a ‘Gone Fishing’ notice on the door, they’ll smell something fishy all right. It will just put off their next visit. They’d be back again later in a filthy temper. I’d rather know who and how many and when and get off on the front foot.”

  Joe was silent for a moment. “Makes a lot of sense, Alf,” he said. Alfred could almost see him break into a grudging smile. “In fact, I remember having said much the same thing myself on one or two occasions. Very well. But two things: get the family out of th
ere and get back-up in. Any thoughts?”

  “I can ring the local nick and have two mates here in five minutes. I know the beat boys. They sometimes call in for a cup of tea and a chin-wag round about this time of the morning. If your friends call by, they might be a bit put off their stroke to find the lobby full of uniformed Plod,” Alfred said cheerfully.

  Joe’s heart sank at the thought of two pink-cheeked, unarmed bobbies squaring up to the squad of professional killers he suspected his opponents could field.

  “Listen, Alfred …” There was a pause as Joe gathered himself to say, “There’s one more thing you can do for me and I want no arguments! I want you to put that address label back on the bag before you hand it over.”

  After a moment’s puzzled hesitation, Jenkins grinned. “Of course. Doing a bit of tiger hunting are we? I’ll ring you back when they’ve taken delivery.”

  THEY ARRIVED EARLIER than expected.

  The pair strode confidently into the lobby of Alfred’s shabby but spacious Georgian house, flicking an eye over the black-and-white tiled hall and its occupants. A professional eye, Alfred judged, as they didn’t show by the bat of an eyelash that they were at all disconcerted to find themselves faced by a lady mopping the floor, two small boys racing their toy cars from one end to the other and three policemen. One was retired and in his shirt sleeves, the other two were decidedly still operative and in full uniform. One constable, one sergeant, both holding mugs of tea. They’d been sitting on the stairs, cheering on the boys and now they rose to their feet, effectively blocking any access to the upper floor.

  “You made good time, gentlemen! Very prompt. But that’s the Met for you—always ahead of themselves,” said Alfred, moving from his apartment door to greet the newcomers jovially. “Alice!” he called to the woman whose mop seemed to be advancing dangerously close to the two pairs of shining city brogues. “That’ll do fine. Give us a bit of space, will you, love, and go and start on the ironing.” Next, he shouted to his grandsons: “Oy! Sid and Ian, put those cars down. Look, here’s your Saturday sixpence. Go to the shop and buy yourselves some aniseed balls or something.”

  “Ooh, ta, Granpa!” The boys abandoned their toy cars and hurried out, arguing the merits of treacle toffee and gobstoppers.

  “The lads are just taking their morning break before they go on duty,” he said, indicating the uniformed pair. “Can I get you two a cuppa? I can squeeze two more out of the pot. No? Right. Oh, before you tell me how I can help you—a bit of ID, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  With a bored gesture, each man drew a Metropolitan police warrant card from his pocket and held it in front of Alfred’s eyes.

  “Right then, let’s see who’ve we got,” said Alfred, calmly putting on the spectacles he kept dangling around his neck on a string. “The boss is a stickler for protocol.”

  “Don’t we know it!” gritted the leader of the two, with an unconvincing attempt at camaraderie. “Kerry Onslow. Inspector Onslow. How do?”

  Onslow made no attempt to offer his hand. But then—you’d be careful about putting one of those expensive new blond leather driving gloves into a sweaty underling’s palm, Alfred reckoned. “And this here’s my sergeant. Now if you wouldn’t mind. We’ve got a list of stuff …”

  “Say no more! I can save you the bother. The boss had got his things all ready to go himself. I’ve brought them down for you.” He walked to the door and picked up the leather bag.

  Onslow’s face darkened and he seemed about to object.

  Alfred laughed. “See here,” he said, indicating the luggage label. “Efficient as ever! He’s even put his address on it. But don’t you go leaving it hanging about anywhere. If that bag doesn’t get to that destination in one piece, he’ll have your guts for garters. And he’ll know where to come looking.”

  “Meaning?” The single word had the power to crack a jaw.

  “Meaning I shall have to ask you to sign this ’ere bit of paper. A receipt. I don’t know what’s in that bag … could be the Koh-i-Noor diamond or a duchess’s knickers. You never know with Sandilands. But I’m not going to get the blame if something goes astray … Sure you understand,” he added ingratiatingly as Onslow, smirking, conceded and took the receipt book.

  Having signed with a flourish, Onslow raised an eyebrow to his companion. The two men tipped their hats in a short derisive gesture and turned to leave. Onslow took the trouble, Alfred noticed, to put his size thirteen foot right onto one of the small Dinky cars, squashing it like a cockroach, before they slipped out.

  “WELL THEY DIDN’T hang about, the minute they got their hands on the bag,” remarked the police sergeant a moment or two after the door swung closed behind the plainclothes men. “I wonder what you’ve just handed them, Alf.”

  Alfred didn’t confide his fears. He cleared his throat and murmured: “We’ll just have to wait a bit now.”

  They waited for the longest five minutes of Alf’s life. He spent them on the doorstep, looking to left and right until, with a grunt of relief, he saw his grandsons sprinting towards him down the street. He gathered them up in a hug and dragged them inside. They fought their way free, pink-cheeked and excited, and the older of the pair began to speak.

  “Got it! I put the number in my car-spotting book.” He handed a small dog-eared book to Alfred. “Sorry we were so long, Granpa—they’d parked it round the corner …”

  “Round two corners,” corrected the smaller boy. “But we found it! They didn’t see us. We tagged along with old Mr. Sparks and his Missis on their way to the shops.”

  “AR 6439? That it?” Alfred read out the last number entered.

  “No. That’s a Riley. Grey one. Bloke had stopped to get a packet of Woodbines from the corner shop. I put that in on the way back. Common or garden. Not like the one your visitors got into! Cor! That’s the one above. ALM 145.”

  “Description of vehicle, sonny?” The sergeant dignified the occasion by producing his own notebook and licking the end of his pencil. He was all benevolent attention.

  “It was a Maybach DS8 Zeppelin. Black. Four-seater.” Sid’s eyes glazed over in memory of the extraordinary vehicle.

  “A what was that again? Zeppelin? Wasn’t that a bomber plane in the war?”

  “Naw! It’s an airship. A dirigible.”

  Sid broke into the police officers’ exchange of views. “Naw, mister! It’s a motor car. We saw one when Granpa took us to the exhibition at Earl’s Court. First I’ve ever seen on the road.”

  “It’s a monster!” said Ian. “A big, black monster! You should have heard it growl when they started up!”

  “Oh, my Lord!” breathed Alfred. “He’d need a pair of ten quid pigskins to handle that!” He put an arm over the boys’ shoulders. “You’ve done well, lads. We’ll make that sixpence a bob, shall we?”

  He turned to his colleagues. “I’ll say thank you to you as well, for the pleasure of your company. And now I’d better make a swift phone call to the boss. Warn him there’s a thundering black beast on the way.” He winked at Ian and looked at his watch. “Early morning, there won’t be that much traffic about but our two sportsmen have still got to struggle over the river and out of London. Fifty miles to do. Let’s say they can do sixty miles per hour on the open roads. It’s going to take them just over an hour.”

  “Granpa,” the older boy said urgently, tugging at his sleeve, “those cars can do a hundred!”

  JOE HAD BEEN hanging on in Marcus’s study within arm’s reach of the telephone for the past half hour but when it rang he had to overcome a sudden attack of paralysis before he could pick it up. He was about to hear nothing good. He picked it up with a leaden hand on the third ring and, the spell broken by the abrasive “Alf ’ere,” he launched into a fast exchange.

  “One English, the other didn’t speak? Description, Alfred? Onslow first … Six foot, well-dressed, black fedora …” Joe noted down Alfred’s swift, professional recitation of details. “… hair mid-brown, eyes grey, no
distinguishing features. Second: Cummings? Eyes brown, similar but silent. A matched pair. Weapons, Alf? Both had guns in shoulder-holsters. Driving a—what was that?… Good lord! There must be fewer than half a dozen of those cars in the country. Ho, ho! Big mistake? Over confidence?” he wondered out loud.

  “Perhaps they’re not expecting to leave witnesses.” Alfred voiced Joe’s worst fears. All he could do was repeat Joe’s own advice back to him. “Get the family out and get help in. Got any armoured divisions down there looking for something to do on a Saturday morning?”

  They broke off abruptly, not troubling to take up precious minutes on assurances and good wishes and Joe got up and made his way back to the breakfast room.

  Approaching, he heard laughter and conversation. Lydia’s light clear voice was meshing with Kingstone’s low rumble, punctuated by short bursts from Marcus, who’d returned from the field.

  “Where on earth have you been, Joe? The papers have arrived. We turned straight to the account of yesterday’s Pilgrims’ luncheon and found our guest’s name in the starry lineup. Come and see. There he is,” she pointed, “sandwiched between an arms manufacturer and a philanthropist. Can’t have been comfortable.’

  Joe’s alarm call was momentarily checked by his surprise at Kingstone’s appearance and demeanour.

  “They keep their sentiments uncontroversial at these dos,” Joe put in hurriedly. “ ‘Brotherly understanding … genuine comradeship … preservation of an organised society …’ ” He quoted from Bacchus’s notes on the Pilgrims’ lunch while fixing Kingstone with a questioning eye. “Who could possibly argue with that?”

  “They also serve excellent champagne at very frequent intervals,” Kingstone added, unconcerned. “After a bottle of Bollinger, even you’d be toasting the Kaiser if invited, Sandilands.”