Superintendent Howard saw me alight from the cab and strode across, setting his jaw in advance to deal with someone he intensely disliked.
‘Mr Tyroll.’ He nodded sharply. ‘Your premises are on the first and second floors, aren’t they?’
‘Yes,’ I confirmed. ‘What’s happened?’
‘The first-floor rear area of the building has been set alight, apparently by arson.’
‘Arson!’ I repeated. ‘Sergeant Parry said that on the phone. Why do you think it’s arson?’
‘There was a courting couple in the yard at the back. They phoned us and the brigade. They say they saw someone in the yard who flung something through the first-floor back window and then threw something else after it that burst into flames.’
I shook my head. ‘Did they give a description of the — the arsonist?’
Howard hesitated. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The courtyard was very dark.’
‘Did they see a car?’ I persisted. ‘A dark-blue saloon perhaps?’
‘You have some idea who did this?’ asked Howard, without answering my question.
‘If it was arson I can only think of one explanation.’
‘I imagine it may have something to do with some of your more political clients,’ said Howard.
‘No. Not this time. Hasn’t Sergeant Parry spoken to you about the Walter Brown murder?’
‘The Brown case?’ Howard’s protuberant eyes widened. ‘That’s merely a mugging. What could this have to do with that?’
‘Brown’s death seems to have to do with the murder of old Francy Cassidy,’ I said. ‘Why shouldn’t it be connected with arson?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ snapped Howard. ‘In any case, I can’t discuss police enquiries with you. You’d better tell John Parry what you know about this matter,’ he said, dismissively, and strode away to his car.
I walked across to Parry. ‘What’s he doing up and about at this time of night?’ I asked, jerking a thumb towards the superintendent’s departing car. ‘It’s bad enough being fire-bombed without him lying to me at three o’clock in the morning.’
‘He told me,’ said Parry, evenly, ‘that he just happened to be in the control room when the call came in. Lying to you, was he?’
‘Of course he was. You’ve got a description, haven’t you? Tell me, was it the bloke in the leather jacket or his boss with the posh sports coat?’
Parry’s features did not change; nor did he reply.
After a long moment I walked off and joined the fire brigade chief.
I introduced myself and asked, ‘Is there much damage?’
‘Not as much as there might have been if those kids hadn’t called us,’ said the chief. ‘The first-floor back room is in a mess. My blokes are just making it safe.’
‘Can I see?’ I asked.
‘Not now,’ said the chief. ‘Better leave it till morning. We’ll make it secure till then, but we’re not sure the floor’s safe.’ He called Parry across. ‘John! Show Mr Tyroll what we found.’
Parry came across, carrying a blackened brick. He held it under one of the engine’s lamps so that I could see it. Underneath the smoke blackening two words were still visible in white paint — ‘TROTSKYITE BASTARD’.
I straightened up from examining the brick. ‘I suppose that’s supposed to mean that someone like the England First mob did it? That’s what Superintendent Howard thinks — or what he wants me to think.’
Parry smiled enigmatically.
‘If that’s what Superintendent Howard thinks, it must be true, isn’t it?’
12
Having a fire is like being drunk. Through the confusion you occasionally realise that it’s going to be a lot worse in the morning and it usually is. To my surprise, when I came to examine my premises next day, the damage was not so bad as I had feared.
The first-floor rear room is a small filing area, its walls ranked with steel filing cabinets and fire-proof cupboards in which we keep wills, property deeds and other documents that require especial safety. I had had visions of a heap of melted metal and ash representing the proof of the worldly wealth and intentions of many of my clients, but walking through the room with the fire officer and John Parry in the morning I was relieved to see that the cabinets had held.
The fire officer showed us an area under the broken window which had evidently been the seat of the fire. From just beneath the window an ellipse spread into the room, across which the floorboards had burned through to the joists.
‘After the brick to break the window,’ said the fireman, ‘they flung an incendiary device of some kind. There were pieces of a bottle and you can smell the spirit. It was probably just a petrol-bomb.’ He pointed to a heap of ash alongside the ellipse. ‘What was that?’
I stooped and picked up some of the crumbling flakes. ‘They must have been documents,’ I said, ‘but they weren’t here before.’
Turning to the nearest cupboard I tried the handle. It was jammed. I pulled out the top drawer of an adjacent filing cabinet. It was empty.
‘That’s what it was,’ I said. ‘The files out of this cabinet.’
Quickly I pulled out the three lower drawers. They were still full. ‘It wasn’t just an arson attack,’ I said. ‘Someone must have been in here first, selected the cabinet, emptied the top drawer and then gone off and staged an arson attack to burn the files.’
‘What were they?’ asked Parry.
‘Letters A to E, including, of course, the files for Walter Brown. They looked for something in his files and wouldn’t have found anything. Just in case they’d missed something, they tried to burn the place and destroy whatever it might have been. Anyway, I’d better stop messing with things. No doubt your Scenes of Crime man will be wanting to look for fingerprints.’
‘Shouldn’t worry about that,’ said Parry, as straight-faced as he had been the night before. ‘Superintendent Howard has already told me to pull in the loonies from England First and sweat them.’
‘Basing his conclusions, no doubt, on the fortuitous evidence of the brick,’ I said, sarcastically.
‘No doubt,’ agreed the sergeant. ‘It is frequently remarked in the tabloid papers that it is only the stupidity of criminals that allows us poor plods to catch them, and it is a fact well known in police circles that arsonists frequently leave behind a piece of specially prepared, non-inflammable evidence that will clearly point to them as the perpetrators. Famous for it, they are.’
The fire chief was bemused by the unspoken tension between me and Parry. ‘Unless there’s anything else either of you wants, I’ll be going,’ he said.
When he had gone we moved to my office and I called Jayne in.
‘It looks like we’ve lost only one drawerful of old files and a big piece of floor,’ I said. ‘Get someone in to fix that floor, will you, and check the fireproof cabinets. I tried the handle on one and it’s jammed. Oh, and get Sandy to bring us some coffee, please.’
When she’d gone I looked at the big Welshman. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose you want a statement now?’
Parry shook his head. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the evidence of the courting couple last night and we know what damage was done. You weren’t here. You can’t help. Instructions from above are to roust out all the known England Firsters and sweat them. What’ll you do if we end up charging one of your old clients?’
‘Defend him, probably. At least I’ll have the rare advantage of being certain he’s innocent.’
We were drinking our coffee in silence when the door opened and Sheila walked in unannounced.
‘I might have known I’d find you here,’ she remarked to Parry.
He stood up. ‘Just taking a brief break from the endless struggle against the powers of darkness, Dr McKenna,’ he said, ‘but the battle cannot wait. Good-day to you,’ and he left.
As soon as he was gone Sheila dropped into the chair he had vacated. ‘Are you all right, Chris? I heard about the fire on th
e local radio news. They said it was a bomb.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I was fast asleep at home when it happened. However, I can’t say I like sitting in an office that reeks of burned timber, wondering who burgled my files and threw a firebomb.’
‘They burgled you as well?’
Quickly I explained to her that the fire had been caused to cover up the theft or destruction of her grandfather’s files.
‘But you said there was nothing much in them.’
‘There wasn’t. The only items that mattered were the deeds of his house and the original of his will. They were in the fireproof cabinets and, so far as we know, they’ve survived.’
‘Then what were they after?’
‘If they stole his files it was because they thought there was something in them that mattered. If we knew what it was, then we’d know what this is all about and probably who killed him — which brings me to my next point. Which is that when they read the stolen files they will realise there isn’t anything in them. So they’ll try again.’
‘They’ll try what?’
‘They’ll decide, perhaps, that if I haven’t got the McGuffin then I must have given it to you. Then they’ll come after you.’
If I had intended that argument to make her think, I was disappointed.
‘What’s a McGuffin?’ she asked, brightly. ‘It’s what Alfred Hitchcock called the thing that everyone’s looking for in a thriller. But, don’t you see? You’re about to become a target.’
‘Now hold on,’ she said. ‘Don’t start with that ‘Why don’t you go home?’ stuff.’
‘I wasn’t. I told you last night I wouldn’t. But we’re trying to do two things at once. We’re trying to work out what’s happening and who’s doing it and we’re also having to deal with the things they are doing, like burgling houses and offices, trying to run people over — killing people, Sheila.’
‘So what do you suggest? We send a bloke out with a white flag and call a ceasefire?’
‘No. I suggest that you vanish. What’s more, I suggest that I vanish with you. That will do two things, it’ll throw them off balance and it’ll give us some time to try and think it out.’
‘Where are we going to vanish to?’
I pulled out a drawer of my desk and poked around inside it, eventually coming up with a business card. It was large, black, shiny and embossed with several lines of Old English type in silver. I passed it to her.
‘That’s a bed and breakfast place in North Bromwich. Pack up at the Victoria, pay your bill and make sure they know you’re going to London on business connected with your grandfather’s death. Then take a cab to the station and catch a train to North Bromwich, it’s only two stops. You’ll be OK there.’
‘What is it?’ she said, looking at the ornate card.
‘Mrs Breadwell runs a superior boarding-house. I once did her son a great favour, or so she thinks, so when people are looking for one of my clients in Belston, I send them to Mrs B, who looks after them and keeps her trap shut.’
‘You’re all romance, you Pommies. You promise to take me away from all this and it turns out to be a boarding-house in North Bromwich!’
‘Ingrate,’ I said. ‘This is a temporary measure. Tomorrow we have another potential witness to interview, after that I shall lure you away to my country retreat for a little while.’
She tucked the card in her bag and stood up. ‘Don’t forget to ring me once you’re safe in the motherly bosom of Mrs Breadwell,’ I said and reached for my desk diary and the phone.
‘Jayne,’ I said, ‘don’t wait for the next office meeting. Get me a mobile phone today — a good one. And is anyone using the Shanty this weekend? They’re not? Good, can I borrow it? Thanks. Oh, and ask Alasdair to cover Monday’s cases.’
When Sheila phoned two hours later to report that she was installed in North Bromwich I felt a weight lift from my mind. We met that evening in a Spanish restaurant in North Bromwich where the proprietors know that paella can be made with lamb instead of frozen prawns. We were at the coffee stage when I noticed a young woman standing at the bar. She was a slight, pretty blonde, overdressed and over-made-up. With a start I recognised one of my clients, a teenage prostitute from Belston’s notorious ‘Relief Road’.
She saw me looking at her and made a beeline for our table.
‘No, it’s all right, Mr Tyroll,’ she said as I pulled out a chair for her. ‘I can’t stop. I just came with a message. Warren’s outside and he needs to talk to you — urgent. But he doesn’t want to be seen.’
I looked around and caught the manager’s eye, bringing him hurrying across.
‘Everything all right, Mr Tyroll?’ the tall Spaniard asked.
‘Everything’s fine, Lario, but I need to talk to someone in private. Can you do anything?’
‘No problem, Mr Tyroll. You can have the private room. Nobody’s in there. Follow me.’
He led us quickly into a small but luxuriously furnished dining room with a six-seater table.
‘Tracey,’ I said, ‘go out and bring Warren in the back way, through the kitchens. Lario will show you how to bring him through. Lario, can we have another round of coffees, for four this time?’
In seconds the girl was back, accompanied by a stocky man in his thirties. He wore an expensive leather jacket over a T-shirt printed with a Union Jack. His hair was cropped almost to the skull and his face and hands were tattooed. He smiled broadly at Sheila and me and sat down. The girl excused herself and slipped out.
‘Sheila,’ I said, ‘this is Warren Saxon, Regional Secretary of the England First Party. Warren, meet Dr Sheila McKenna of Adelaide.’
Warren nodded affably. ‘Pleased to meet you, miss,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about your grandfather,’ and he sounded as if he meant it.
Lario brought the coffees in and they stayed silent till he was gone. Then Sheila said, ‘What exactly does your party believe in, Mr Saxon?’
‘An Anglo-Saxon England,’ he said promptly, putting four spoonfuls of brown sugar in his coffee. ‘Nationalisation of the banks and insurance companies, repatriation of immigrants — ’
‘Cut the politics, Warren,’ I said. ‘If you know that Dr McKenna is Walter Brown’s granddaughter you must have been doing your homework.’
‘Oh, I have, Mr Tyroll, I have. Because I’ve been having some homework done on me. No doubt the filth have told you that my boys did your office last night?’
I nodded.
‘Well, we didn’t. We ain’t ungrateful, you know that. We come to you when we got trouble and you do your best. We ain’t gonna bomb your gaff, are we?’
‘I never thought you did,’ I said, ‘but is that all that this is about?’
‘Oh, no. This is about who did do it, Mr Tyroll.’
‘Do you know?’ I asked, sharply.
‘I know who offered us a — er, contribution to party funds if we’d do it.’
‘And who was that?’
‘A bloke I’ve never even seen before, let alone done business with. He never gave me a name, but he was English, expensive education I reckon, dressed expensive too. Sounded and looked like an ex-Special Services officer to me.’
‘And what exactly did he want you to do?’
‘He wanted us to go into your office, snatch all the files on a certain old gentleman and then burn the place. We turned it down. We got loyalties, you know, you’re nothing if you ain’t got loyalties. But that is what happened last night, isn’t it, Mr Tyroll?’
I nodded. ‘Plus the fact that the window was broken with a brick with ‘TROTSKYITE BASTARD!’ painted on it, pointing the finger at you and your pals,’ I said.
Warren shook his cropped head disapprovingly. ‘They never get their politics right, do they, the funnies? I know you ain’t a Trotskyite. If I’d have done it that brick would have said ‘BLOODY ANARCHIST!”
We all chuckled, then I asked, ‘Is that who you think he was, the man that offered you? DI5 or 6 or 9?’
> ‘Something like that,’ said Warren. ‘But I wouldn’t like to guess exactly what. But that’s not the important bit. The reason I came was that he’s been back to me, tonight.’
I stared at him.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘He’s made me another offer. He’ll get the filth off my boys’ backs if we’ll do a job for him, and he’ll bung us.’
‘And what is it this time?’
Without looking up from his coffee, Warren said quietly, ‘He wants the lady, here. He wants Dr McKenna.’
13
Sheila and I stared at him, as our suspicion became fact.
I broke the silence. ‘What did you tell them?’
‘I told him I’d see what I could do. I had to, Mr Tyroll. He’d made things very difficult for me with that firebombing.’
‘And now you’ve tracked us here, what are you going to tell him?’ I asked, grimly.
‘I’m going to tell him as the staff at the Victoria say that the lady’s gone to London and she hasn’t kept her booking,’ said Warren. ‘There’s not much I can do for him in the Smoke that he can’t do better and that’ll take up his time for a bit. That’s what I came to tell you.’
I relaxed slightly and so did Sheila.
‘And how did you know we were here?’ I asked.
‘You forgotten that you sent Georgy Small to Mrs Breadwell when the filth was giving him trouble? I been cruising North Brom all evening looking out for you two.’
‘We’re very grateful to you, Warren,’ I said. ‘How long do you think you can stall your funny man?’
‘About as long as it takes him or his mob to snuffle round London and find out the lady ain’t there. But that won’t be my fault, will it? After all, you managed to convince the Victoria that she’s gone to London.’
The Victory Snapshot (A Chris Tyroll Mystery Book 1) Page 8
