"Yes, he'd been there. Several times, too. Which makes me wonder whether he'd worked out what Zach was up to. Perhaps he'd tried to put the black on him. But he'd have made a mistake there. If Zach is what I think, he'll be ruthless. He wouldn't think twice about killing Hooke."
I shifted in my seat and turned on the ignition. I fired the engine and put the car into gear.
"Perhaps he wouldn't think twice about killing us," I said.
***
By the time I'd parked the car outside Shirley's flat it was late afternoon.
It had been a sombre return journey. We'd driven back to Brighton by a country route. Both of us needed time to think about what we learned at Natterjack Grange. Or what we thought we'd learned.
I suspected Figgis would've been prowling the newsroom. He'd want to know where I'd gone. He'd find out soon enough. I was determined to crack the Hooke murder story - and the more I learnt about it, the more I was certain I would.
Even if Zach posed a new danger.
We trotted down the steps to Shirley's basement flat. She opened the door, stepped inside, and let out a whoop of delight.
I followed her in. "What is it?" I asked.
Shirley picked a letter off the doormat. "It's from Australia. My Ma's writing."
She hustled into the sitting room, threw herself into an easy chair, and ripped open the envelope.
I watched as her eyes raced over the pages and the smile on her face faded.
I said: "What's wrong?"
"Ma's coming to England. She says she won some money unexpectedly. Decided to spend it on a surprise visit. But according to this letter, she was sailing on a ship that was due to arrive in Southampton early this morning."
"That's good isn't it? But why didn't she tell you earlier?"
Shirley waved the envelope at me. "Look at the stamp. She sent the letter by surface mail. She's never done that before. She always used aerograms. They only take five days from Oz."
"Why would she do that?"
Shirl shrugged. "I don't know." She picked up the envelope she'd thrown on the floor. "Look. She's written 'By air mail' on the envelope', but she's only paid for surface postage. I guess she must have run out of aerograms."
"The letter must have come on the same ship as your Ma,” I said. “So she'll be here soon. That's good news, isn't it?"
Shirley ripped open the letter and began to read.
She said: "If this letter came on the same ship as Ma, where is she?"
"You weren't here to let her in."
"She knows I leave a key under the flowerpot by the front door. She says in her letter that she'll let herself in if I'm not here."
"So where is she?" I wondered.
Shirley stood up. She headed for the bedroom. "Perhaps she's fallen asleep."
I went into the hall. Looked at the front door. There was another letter which had fallen to one side. It had become lodged behind the doormat so we'd not spotted it as we'd walked in.
I hurried up the hall and picked it up. There was no envelope. Just a sheet of foolscap paper folded twice. I opened it.
Shirley came into the hall.
I looked at her.
She stared back at me. "What's wrong now?" she said.
My hand shook as I held up the note.
My mouth had turned as dry as a dustbowl. I swallowed hard. I couldn't think of any way to soften the blow that was coming.
"Your mother's been kidnapped," I said.
Chapter 17
Shirley threw back her head and laughed - a raucous belly-shaking guffaw.
"Now I know you're tugging my titties," she said. "It'd be easier to kidnap a boxing kangaroo."
I moved up the hall and showed Shirley the letter. "It's true," I said.
Shirley grabbed the letter. Her eyes raced over the words. Her jaw dropped and her eyes misted. Her hand began to shake.
She dropped the letter on the floor and folded herself into my arms. She sobbed on my shoulder. I felt her body against me throbbing with fear.
"It can't be possible," she said between gulping sobs. "It can't."
I picked up the letter and led Shirley into the sitting room. I sat her in a chair. I fetched a glass of water and said: "Drink this."
She put the glass on the table undrunk. She rummaged a handkerchief from a pocket somewhere and blew her nose. Wiped a tear from her eye. She was white and her lips quivered.
She said: "Read the letter to me."
I read: "You've been sticking your nose in where it's not wanted…"
Shirley held up her hand. "They can't mean Ma."
I said grimly: "They mean me."
I read on: "We mind our business. You mind yours. Just to encourage you, we've taken the lady as our insurance policy. Keep out of our affairs and she comes back to you when we've completed our business. And no police. Repeat, no cops. We shall know if they're informed. Then all deals are off. You won't see her again. Remember: stay away from the cops."
I put the letter down. It had been typed on an old typewriter with a black and red ribbon. The ribbon had been poorly fitted so that the lower parts of some capital letters appeared in red.
Shirley said: "I don't understand. They came to kidnap you?"
I nodded: "It looks like it. This comes from the crowd I tangled with last night. They came for me, but they took your mother instead."
"But how did they get this address?"
A picture flashed in my mind.
Shoreham harbour. I'm racing back to my car. I've left the door open. And Jock - Desperate Dan - has grabbed the papers from the back seat. They're mostly the old newspapers and press releases I should have chucked out. But there's also the envelope that held the Press Ball tickets. The one I’d had sent to Shirley's flat. The one I’d tossed into the back of the car. And the one I definitely should have thrown away.
I explained. "They came to kidnap me. Or kill me."
Shirley's face grew grim. Her eyes flashed angrily. "I told you to chuck that," she snapped.
"I slung it in the back of my car. I meant to get rid of it. I'm so sorry."
"This is your fault," she screamed. "Why didn't you throw that old crap away? You idiot."
There was a moment's silence. It felt like an electric shock.
Then a voice said: "We must go to the police."
It was my voice. I never thought I'd hear myself say that. But with Shirley's Ma in danger this was beyond serious.
Shirley jumped up from the chair and squared up to me. "No police. The letter says no police."
"Kidnappers always say that. They won't know we've been in touch if the cops are discreet."
"Yeah! I can just see those discreet cops now. They'll charge in with their size tens and my Ma ends up taking a horizontal ride to the stiff's store."
Shirley slumped back in the chair. I'd never seen her look so furious.
I thought about what she'd said. Perhaps she was right. Detective Inspector Holdsworth had shown about as much enthusiasm for feeling collars as for beating his own head with his truncheon. But perhaps detectives didn't have truncheons. I was getting off the point. I had Holdsworth down as a lazy no-hoper who wouldn't shift from his chair to save his bum from blisters. But perhaps there was more to it than that. The kidnappers had emphasised in the letter that they'd know if we approached the cops. As I'd told Shirl, they'd say that anyway. But perhaps this time it was true. Perhaps Holdsworth was welded to his office chair doing nothing because he'd had a sweetener. "A policeman's lot is not a happy one." Perhaps Gilbert and Sullivan's song wasn't always true. Perhaps Holdsworth's lot was a very happy one. Perhaps he had the joy of a fat bank balance, courtesy of a drug gang's pay-offs.
I said: "OK. No cops. We sort out this problem ourselves."
Shirley shot me a flinty look. "How?"
"We don't know who made the snatch, but my guess is that it was the two slow-brains Jock and Toby," I said. "I saw them last night at the harbour. They seemed the only muscle
in the operation. Because this is Saturday, I can just see them confident they'd find me at home washing the car or trimming the hedge. They didn't realise I don’t even live here. And then they blunder in and find your mother. They're working under orders from the boss - that's Zach. He looked like a tough cookie, so they won't want to go back empty-handed. But there's a problem if they take your Ma. They've brought a ransom note with them - but it's all about kidnapping me. They can't leave it, because it will make no sense. We'd just dismiss it as a hoax. So back they troop to their Mr Big and get a new note typed out. Then they return to deliver it. That suggests to me that someone associated with this operation has a base in Brighton or nearby. Otherwise, they wouldn't have had time to make the round trip - hide your mother wherever, and race back here with the note."
Shirley had been pacing around the room while I spoke. She turned towards me and said: "So how does that help us?"
I said: "It gives us an idea of the organisation we're dealing with. There's a chain of command and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. We tackle that weak link and we can break the chain and rescue your Ma."
Shirley stared hard at me. "And who is the weakest link?"
"Owen Griffiths," I said.
***
Shirley said: "If this goes wrong, I'll string up your lights along Brighton prom like summer illuminations."
I said: "That'll give the tourists something new to moan about."
We were in my MGB heading towards Steyning. I planned to confront Griffiths in his lab before he realised what was happening.
Shirley said: "Why have you tagged Griffiths as the weak link?"
"He's got more to lose than the others we've seen - a career as a schoolmaster at a respected grammar school. I'm not sure how he got into this, but I expect it was money. It's usually the sniff of riches. With drug money swelling his bank balance, he'd feel like he'd solved the alchemists' puzzle and found a way to transmute base metal into gold."
"He's not going to admit he's on the take."
"Griffiths strikes me as the nervous type. I think he'll have been drawn into the racket one step at a time. He was in too deep before he realised it."
"The guy stinks as much as his experiments," Shirley said.
“And he lied to me about his alibi. He said he’d attended a chemical society meeting – but it had been cancelled.”
"Perhaps he's the man who killed Hooke," Shirley reminded me.
I had nothing to say to that. I pressed my foot down on the accelerator and the tyres squealed as we sped round a bend in the road.
***
The lessons had long ended and the chemistry lab was dark by the time we reached the school.
But we tracked Griffiths down to a small private sitting room he occupied in one of the boarding houses.
When he opened his door and saw us, he stepped backwards in surprise. I used the opportunity to barge inside and Shirley hustled after me.
Griffiths stuttered a bit but realised there was no way he could throw us out without making a scene. He shrugged his shoulders and closed the door.
The room was a cosy little haven with an easy chair and a small divan. An occasional table next to the chair held a telephone. There was an Indian rug on the floor and a bookshelf loaded with tomes about organic this and inorganic that. A couple of Agatha Christie's finest evidently provided his lighter reading. Which was handy. He was just about to discover what it feels like to be the suspect in a whodunit.
An old Bakelite wireless stood on a small table in the corner of the room. It was tuned into the Home Service and Saturday-Night Theatre was about to start. It sounded like tonight's show was a Sherlock Holmes tale.
I pointed at the radio and said: "You can switch that off. You're about to discover how you just won a starring role in your own drama."
Griffiths started to protest, thought better of it, and clicked the radio off just as Carleton Hobbs started on The Sign of the Four.
Griffiths pointed at Shirley and said: "Who's she?"
Shirley said: "Watch your mouth, whacker. I'm the girl who's gonna squeeze your nuts until they pop like rotten plums."
Hastily, I said: "Miss Goldsmith is the paper's court reporter - temporary post. She wants to get a good look at you before she sees you standing in the dock."
Griffiths stood up straighter. Clicked his shoulders back. Jutted out his chin. He was doing his best to look affronted. He moved towards the door.
He said: "I'm calling the headmaster."
I said: "I wouldn't do that. Unless you want to be sacked on the spot."
"Very well. I'll give you five minutes. What's this all about?"
"Shall we sit down?" I said.
"If we must."
He slumped into his easy chair. Shirley and I perched on the divan.
I said: "In the interests of saving time, let's dispense with the cat-and-mouse tactics and cut straight to the facts."
"Suits me. If you have any facts," Griffiths said sourly.
"I know the part you play in a drug smuggling ring," I said.
"That is a preposterous…" But I held up my hand before Griffiths could finish.
"I know what you're going to say," I said. "Gross libel. Defamation of character. Slur on your good name. I've heard it all before. Usually from people whose names had already turned rancid. Just listen and perhaps we can do one another a bit of good."
Griffiths frowned but I could see the cogs in his brain turning over. He knew he was in a corner and wondered whether there might be a way out.
"And listen good, whacker, because my Ma's life is at stake here," Shirley butted in.
"We'll come to that in a moment. First, let's start at the beginning. A few months ago - I'm not sure how many, but you can fill in the details later - you were recruited into a drug smuggling ring. Your role was a vital one - you were the quality assurance manager. The one problem with drug smuggling is that you have to deal with crooks. Buying illegal drugs isn't like nipping down to the chemists for a packet of aspirins. You know what you get in the pack - and the strength is helpfully printed on the label stuck to the bottle. With illegal drugs, you could be buying anything. You think you've got a pound of pure heroin, but you don't know whether it's been cut with half a pound of baking powder. Your seller is taking the rise out of you in more ways than one. Your role in the racket was a vital one. It was to test a sample of the product before the money was handed over for the goods."
"That is a slanderous fiction," Griffiths blustered.
"In the early hours of yesterday morning, I watched you in the school chemistry lab performing the tests. And very professionally done, if I may say so."
Griffiths slumped lower in his chair. "I didn't see you," he muttered.
"You wouldn’t - when I don't want you to."
"You have no evidence. You can't prove it. It's my word against yours. The respected schoolmaster against the gutter journalist."
"If you don't watch your mouth, buster, you'll find out faster than you expected who's in the gutter," Shirley said.
Griffiths bristled. "Don't threaten me in my own room."
I held up both hands in a calming gesture. "Let's all cool down, shall we?"
I turned to Griffiths. "The fact is it won't be hard to find the proof you're involved in this dirty business. If the cops raid your lab, they'll find chemicals you wouldn't usually use in your lessons - but you would use for drug testing. If they raid your room, they'll find your bank books - and they'll want to know where unexplained sums in your account came from. And there'll be more. You're no career crook - you won't have covered your tracks like one. But your future doesn't hinge on whether I can prove you were testing illegal drugs in the lab the other night."
"Doesn't it?" Griffiths looked worried.
"It hinges on whether you can provide information which helps us to rescue Shirley's mother. She's been kidnapped by the tough guys in this business. And that's an even more serious crime. I'm bett
ing you're deep enough in the smuggling ring to know who'd try a desperate scam like that."
"I might do," Griffiths said petulantly. "But what's in it for me?"
"The admiration which only a newspaper can lavish on a true hero."
"Hero - I don't think I can be a hero," Griffiths stammered.
"Don't worry, we're not asking you for fisticuffs - just information."
"Jeez, I've seen jellyfish on Bondi beach with more backbone," Shirley chipped in.
Griffiths rubbed his hands together. He was thinking there might be a way out for him. But the gesture made him look like Uriah Heep.
He said: "There's a man called Zach."
"I know," I said.
"You've met him?"
"That's a pleasure still to come."
"Zach handles the organisation. He's the link between Tom Hobson who brings the drugs ashore in his fishing boat and whoever sells them on land."
"And who's that?"
"I don't know. Tom is a member of the bell-ringing group, but he keeps himself to himself. I've asked him who else is involved, but he's warned me off asking too many questions. He says it's dangerous to know too much."
"What do you know about Zach?"
"Not much, except that he showed up shortly after Christabel Fox returned from America. There was quite a scandal at the time about her open support for LSD users. I was asked for my opinion - as a chemist - and I pointed out that lysergic acid diethylamide isn't illegal in this country. At least, not yet. I said we shouldn't criticise anyone who's doing something that's legal."
"And after that someone - I'm guessing Zach - approached you with some ex-curricular work."
"How did you know?"
"Because Zach would have been attracted by your free-and-easy views about drugs. Why did you accept his offer?"
Griffiths looked down and fiddled with the frills on a cushion.
"Money problems," he said. "I'd been gambling on the horses. Rather heavily, I'm afraid."
"And rather unsuccessfully," Shirley said.
Griffiths nodded. "I'd borrowed money and the creditor was - how shall I put it - pressing for payment."
"Have you met Zach often?" I asked.
"Only when he has a sample he wants me to test."
The Mother's Day Mystery Page 15
