The radio came through again. It was eleven thirty and there were few cars going towards London. ‘Hello Dorset special escort, H.T.Over.’
‘Dorset H.T. here. Over.’
‘Can we check the registrations of your two suspect vehicles? They’re Continental. Over.’
‘Right then. First one – 2765J.O. That’s J for Jude, O for Obscure. Over.’
‘Got that. Over.’
‘Second one. 8965 N.G. That’s N for Native, G for Gabriel. Over.’
‘Got that one too. Thanks. Over.’
Davies, his injuries throbbing, dozed against Jemma in the back. ‘What’s for C?’ she asked. ‘Casterbridge?’
‘How come you know our codes?’ the policeman said over his shoulder.
The next check was at Sunbury at the end of the motorway. The two estate cars were ten minutes ahead. Davies awoke and blinked at the white lights arched like luminous trees over the road. ‘Nearly there,’ said the driver. ‘I recognise this section. ’Tis a bit different from Piddlehinton, ain’t it, Percy?’
‘More like Bere Regis,’ said the other policeman. ‘Can’t wait to see how these London coppers spring the trap. They’ll all be ready now.’
‘If I know anything,’ said Davies wearily, ‘they’ll be strung three abreast across the road stopping all traffic entering the area, including the two cars we’re supposed to nab.’
They drove over the elevated sections of the road on to the suburban carriageway and turned north. Davies sat up expectantly as he gave the driver final directions. ‘I wonder how Mod managed,’ he said to Jemma.
When they reached the trading estate it was flooded with light. People were standing on the opposite pavement and leaning on their forearms in the upper windows of their houses. The Dorset car was stopped by a road block but after some discussion was permitted through. The gates of the estate were wide open and guarded by further police. ‘They’ve certainly sat up and taken notice,’ said Jemma.
‘Sometimes they tend to go over the top,’ said Davies. ‘They’ve probably got a warship patrolling the canal. There are the cars.’
Two estate vehicles, surrounded by police, uniformed and in plain clothes, were parked directly outside the gaping service doors of Blissen Pharmaceuticals. An ambulance was drawn up on the road and the attendants were loading a stretcher on which was a substantial mound. ‘Mod,’ said Davies.
They got out as soon as the Dorset car stopped. Police were chattering into walkie-talkies. Davies and Jemma hurried to the ambulance. By now Mod was inside groaning on the stretcher. They went in after him. He was lying, head padded and bandaged, eyes closed, his cheeks blowing like bellows. He opened his eyes and saw them. ‘God, Dangerous, what you let me in for,’ he moaned. ‘That woman, the Jungfrau, she caught me. She beat me up something terrible, Dangerous. Both fists. I’ve never been so battered. She hit me a glancing blow with a fire-axe.’
Davies said: ‘Thank God it’s not serious.’
‘It was quite a soft fire-axe,’ muttered Mod. ‘I hope I can claim compensation.’
They left the ambulance to take him to hospital. ‘Poor old Mod,’ said Davies. He looked at Jemma. ‘Fancy being mugged by Frau Harrer.’
They saw Harrer immediately they entered the Blissen warehouse. She and three men from the estate cars were handcuffed, scowling, and sitting on some cardboard cartons, half-surrounded by police. Superintendent Vesty appeared. ‘The drug squad are livid, Davies,’ he said with gritty satisfaction. ‘Their guv’nor, Berry, is after your skin. They’ve been watching this set-up for months and now they reckon you’ve fouled up the whole operation.’
‘We’ve got them in handcuffs,’ said Davies, nodding towards the prisoners. ‘What else do they want?’
A stranger in a blue raincoat appeared. ‘I’ll tell you what, laddie,’ he said, strongly Scots. ‘About forty others. I’m Inspector Berry of the drug squad. You’ve screwed up months of surveillance. The others have taken off by now. All we’ve got, Mr Davies, is the wee fry.’
Angrily he strode out through the warehouse doors. ‘They call him Logan Berry,’ said Vesty conversationally. ‘Good nickname, isn’t it?’
‘I wouldn’t call Mrs Harrer wee fry,’ muttered Davies.
The huge woman seemed to hear. She rose from a cardboard carton and, despite the timid efforts of two constables to persuade her to remain seated, she advanced on Davies, her handcuffed hands held out in front of her.
‘So,’ she sneered. ‘You again have ballsed up it!’
‘Seems like it,’ shrugged Davies.
‘You balls up it for me also,’ she grunted. She strode towards him and before any of the dithering officers could move, she brought up her handcuffed hands like a shaft on a beam engine. She dealt Davies the most fearful blow under the chin and sent him staggering back towards the door. He collided with an engrossed constable, and they both tipped to the floor. With a great Teutonic cry Mrs Harrer plunged forward through the gap created, and pounded out into the night. Shouts and whistles rose and a posse of police went in pursuit, some further treading over the prostrate Davies.
Screaming and swinging her handcuffed hands before her like a battle-axe, she bounded on her mighty legs down the sloping road towards the canal. The gate in the wire mesh fence was open. She charged at it with every pound of frenzied force in her enormous body, ramming the duty constable and sending him spinning on to the tow-path. With a shrieking Valkyrie cry, she ran a last few unhesitating paces and threw herself into the black water of the canal. She hit the surface with a gigantic splash. Her pursuers poured out through the mesh gate and halted, looking at the cold, grim water and the widening circles under the light of the old lamps.
As the growing crowd of policemen stared from the bank, so the woman came to the surface. She had changed her mind. ‘Help!’ she bellowed. ‘I order help!’ Once more her large body sank.
‘There’s no fucking way I’m going in there,’ muttered a constable. Others shook their heads.
Two others took off their boots and jackets and jumped, holding their noses, into the foul, dark water. Frau Harrer once more came to the surface, her handcuffed hands beating the water.
She resubmerged, this time not to reappear. When Davies, helped by Jemma and PC Westerman, who had stumbled to the edge of the canal, arrived they were towing her body ashore with boat-hooks. ‘There goes my witness,’ Inspector Berry of the drug squad complained.
‘And mine,’ muttered Davies.
They turned away from the tow-path. Westerman went to another ambulance whose obliging crew tried to stop his nosebleed while they waited to receive the body of Mrs Harrer. Jemma put her arm around Davies. Then a further commotion rose from between the dark walls of the industrial premises. Another few yards and they rounded a corner to see three stunned policemen backing away while down the sloping path from Iverson Theatricals came the little-legged figure of Pinocchio, the great head swaying from side to side, the body staggering, hands clutching two Scotch bottles. ‘Hi diddlee dee,’ sang Edwin Curl. ‘An actor’s life for me!’
Mod was lying in the hospital bed looking large and pale, his head plastered, a saline drip inserted into his wrist, and a disgruntled expression in his eye. ‘We’ve changed places,’ he mumbled through his thick lip when he saw Davies. ‘I tried to get your regular bed, but there’s somebody in it.’
‘It doesn’t have much of a view,’ said Davies. ‘How are you feeling?’ Jemma patted Mod on the arm and he winced.
‘Battered,’ replied the philosopher. ‘Severely battered. God, that Jungfrau is a size. And she was mad as hell. I never thought I’d be beaten up by a woman. I was just creeping to look into the window of the Blissen premises. She caught me and before I knew what had happened, she was thumping me all over the place. Naturally, I couldn’t retaliate. She’s a woman, after all, despite evidence to the contrary. She would have killed me, Dangerous, if the police hadn’t arrived.’
‘She jumped in the canal,�
�� said Davies simply. ‘There was a hell of a splash.’
Mod’s bruised eyes opened. ‘She’s dead?’
‘Drowned. Like Lofty.’ He felt his face. ‘She gave me both handcuffed fists. She was certainly no featherweight.’
Mod moved his feet over and Jemma and Davies sat on the edge of the bed. It was nine in the morning. The sky was insipid outside the window although there were shades of green on a bush that brushed the panes. ‘So it’s all over,’ said Mod. ‘Everybody’s satisfied.’
‘Nobody’s satisfied,’ corrected Davies. ‘The drug squad are livid because we spoiled their ambush by having one of our own. According to them or their guv’nor, Mr Logan Berry, if you can believe it, the Harrer woman was only part of a bigger scene and all the others have now done a runner.’
‘So you’re still in it.’
‘Right in it.’
Jemma said: ‘But now, at least, you know what happened to Lofty.’
‘Indeed. That’s easy now. There he was trundling his pram along the tow-path, still trying to remember what he’d done with all that pre-War loot, and he chances on the end of the latest drug run. Not just that, but he arrives at the very moment when they’re clobbering poor old Sigmund Dietrich, breaking something over his skull – the scene that Shiny Bright also witnessed.
‘The Jungfrau and her mates can’t allow Lofty to see that sort of thing going on, doors open, cars unloading, man floored with a fire-axe …’
‘Don’t,’ pleaded Mod. ‘Not the fire-axe.’
‘Pardon. It was just a case of thieves falling out. Perhaps Dietrich wanted a bigger slice of the profits, perhaps they had discovered he was untrustworthy. Whatever it was they had parted his hair rather spectacularly. When his body was washed up the cleft skull was there for all to see, but it was concluded that it was caused by being thrown up repeatedly on to Chesil Bank.’
‘Did you have a nice time down there?’ asked Mod.
‘It was lovely,’ said Jemma. ‘You must go some time.’
Davies said: ‘I was just about to be slaughtered by their watchman, a gent who said he was Askew of the Department of the Environment. He nearly did for my environment, I can tell you. Fortunately, this lady, despite her slight appearance, wields a nifty rock, so that bit of blood and thunder we eventually won.’
‘You think he was waiting for you?’ asked Jemma. ‘Not just linking up with the smugglers.’
‘He counted them in and out,’ said Davies. ‘But this time he was waiting for me too. Once Dietrich’s body was washed up, they must have known their time was limited. That last run was the biggest consignment of heroin ever to be brought into this country. There was enough there to keep the entire addicted population smiling quietly for a long time.’
‘Smuggling drugs in pharmaceuticals is not a bad idea, is it?’ mumbled Mod. ‘Was the boss of Blissen, what’s his name, Harrison, in on it?’
‘He knew nothing about it until some copper got him out of bed in the middle of the night. The late Jungfrau was the operator. The consignments which left Zurich were legitimate enough, and those that arrived by trucks in normal trading hours were above board. That’s when the drivers stayed overnight in Weymouth and came on the following morning to London. The dodgy ones came off the boat and straight to London, except for the October consignment which, because fog delayed the previous day’s ferries, arrived in Weymouth at midday on October 6th, and the drivers and Sigmund Dietrich had to kill a few hours at the Seashore Hotel until it was all right to proceed after dark.’
Jemma said: ‘Why did they come through Weymouth?’
‘It’s quieter than Dover or the other entry ports,’ said Davies. ‘But they also picked up the drugs somewhere in France, Paris or perhaps even Cherbourg, where they joined the ferry. There’s no way they would have been processed through Switzerland, although the whole thing was obviously financed and organised there.’
‘Will I get a reward or a medal?’ asked Mod practically.
‘I’d recommend it, but I think I’m on the verge of getting the elbow myself,’ said Davies. ‘Mr Logan Berry is after my head.’
‘He can have mine,’ moaned Mod.
‘We’d better go,’ said Jemma. ‘We’ll come and see you tonight.’
‘It must be murder lying there with a bottle just out of reach,’ said Davies, nodding at the drip.
‘Salt water,’ said Mod.
They left the ward and the hospital and walked out into the street. It was quietly raining. She put her arm in his as they walked. ‘You’re still not happy, are you,’ she said.
‘Not really,’ he answered. ‘What we’ve done is to solve the wrong mystery.’
On the night, a week later, that they let Mod out they went to The Babe In Arms.
‘Is your promotion through yet?’ Mod asked.
Davies shrugged moodily. ‘As far as the Metropolitan Police is concerned, I’m still in limbo,’ he said.
They had been there an hour when a tall thin man came in at the distant end of the bar. He began to look around.
‘That’s the diver,’ said Jemma, who saw him first. ‘The one that went into the canal after the pram.’
‘Tennant,’ said Davies. At that moment the man saw them, waved and moved through the drinkers towards them. He was wearing an overcoat and had another over his arm. Davies bought him a drink.
‘I’ve been thinking of coming to see you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in here once or twice but you weren’t here.’
‘We’ve all been on holiday,’ said Mod, feeling his head. ‘These two at the seaside, me in the Central Middlesex Hospital.’
‘Sorry about that,’ said Tennant but not asking why. He shifted the second overcoat on his lap. ‘It was this,’ he said. ‘This coat.’ He handed it across to Davies whose hands were already halfway to accepting it. Davies opened the collar and looked at the label.
‘Raoul Susini, Paris,’ he said. He looked at Jemma and then at Tennant.
‘You recognise it?’ said Tennant.
‘I think so. It belonged to a Sigmund Dietrich, deceased, formerly of Zurich.’
‘It’s been hanging up in the subaqua club,’ said Tennant, embarrassed. ‘I thought it might be something important. I read in the papers about the police at the Blissen place by the canal, the raid, and the woman dying and I guessed this might be something to do with it. You remember Archie, one of my divers that day we brought up the old pram? Well, he found it.’
Davies said: ‘In the canal?’
‘Right. He saw it there, a bit downstream when we were looking for the pram. He didn’t think much of it, so he said, but he went back afterwards and lugged it out. He could see it was a good coat, so he dried it out, had it cleaned …’
‘And kept it,’ muttered Davies.
‘Right. It was just his size.’
‘Where is Archie now?’
‘Saudi Arabia,’ said Tennant. ‘He left it on the coat hangers in the club. It’s been there ever since. Is it important?’
Davies shrugged. ‘It might have been. The owner was murdered.’
‘Christ! I’m sorry.’
‘So was he,’ said Davies. He rubbed the material. ‘Lovely bit of cloth,’ he said. His hands went around the coat. ‘Was there anything in the pockets?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. There was nothing when I found it on the hanger. No clues, eh?’
Davies was staring into his beer. Mod looked over to see if a spider or some other insect had fallen in. Davies looked up. ‘There are times,’ he said very slowly, ‘when I think I’ll never make a copper.’
‘Now you tell us,’ said Mod.
‘What is it?’ asked Jemma, leaning towards him.
‘Lofty. Right at the very beginning of all this. God, we’ve wracked our brains enough, but I’d forgotten to ask if he had anything in his pockets when he was found. He had trousers, a jacket and an overcoat.’ He stood up. ‘I’d better hang on to the coat,’ he said to Tennant. ‘I’ll mak
e sure the Met. Police don’t sell it.’ He looked around at them. ‘I’ll just wander down the nick,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in twenty minutes.’
He walked quickly towards the police station, muttering under his breath. It was a light, damp evening. Children were playing games in the side-streets. Venus was patrolling on the other pavement. She waved a hand. ‘Busy?’ Davies called to her.
‘Nothing moving, Dangerous,’ she called back.
He went into the police station. Lewis Emmanuel was on duty behind the desk. ‘Lew,’ he said. ‘I’d like to have a look in the lost property cupboard.’
‘What’ve you lost, Dangerous?’
‘I don’t know yet. We still put stuff in there found on corpses, don’t we? It’s the same place?’
The sergeant produced a key. ‘Stiffs’ lost property is in the cabinet on the right,’ he said. ‘How’s your lady friend?’
‘Fine, thanks,’ he said, taking the key. ‘She sends her love.’
‘I wish she’d bring it herself,’ said the sergeant. ‘I can never understand how you got locked in there at Christmas.’
‘It’s a mystery,’ acknowledged Davies. ‘But we deal in mysteries, don’t we?’ He went down a corridor, opened a door and turned on the light switch. It was a small room, little more than a cupboard, green-painted and smelling damp, hung with coats and hats, umbrellas, and other mislaid personal belongings, including – he was briefly intrigued to see – a red flag, three pairs of heavy boots and a box of fireworks. The cabinet on the right had a key in its lock. He turned it and opened the door. Everything in there was contained in plastic bags. On each bag in thick ink was a name. Davies searched. Many people had died leaving little personal bits and pieces behind them. Most of the packets rattled with small change, there were the shapes of several pairs of glasses and the ghostly outlines of false teeth. He had turned over half a dozen before he came to a plastic envelope with the inscription ‘Wilfred Brock’. He picked it up. There was only one thing inside it. He could feel its shape. A single key.
They were waiting at The Babe In Arms. Mod was professing embarrassment that financial circumstances had ruled that Jemma had provided the last round of drinks. ‘When I get my police reward,’ he promised, ‘we’ll have a party.’
The Complete Dangerous Davies Page 46
