by Graham Ison
‘You want me to check it out?’ asked Daly, once he’d cast his eye over the letter with the New York address.
‘If it’s no trouble, Joe,’ I said. ‘But it’ll probably come to nothing.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Daly. ‘For all we know, it might be connected to an ongoing boiler-room scam in the States.’ Turning in his chair, he shouted at the open door between his office and that of his secretary. ‘Darlene, just hightail your sweet little butt in here one second.’
Daly’s secretary reappeared, a notebook in her hand. ‘Yes, Joe?’ She smiled at the three of us in turn, sat down in the vacant armchair and crossed her shapely legs. I wondered if there was something going on between her and Joe. And who would blame him . . . or her for that matter?
‘Send a coded signal to the SAIC,’ began Daly, pronouncing it ‘say-ik’, ‘at the New York office—’ He broke off to explain. ‘Means special agent in charge, Harry,’ he said, telling me something I knew already. He returned to his dictation. ‘Attach a copy of this letter of Harry’s, Darlene, and ask for enquiries to be made into its bona fides.’ He went on to outline the details of my murders and the share-pushing scam in which the victims had been involved.
‘That it, Joe?’ asked Darlene.
‘That’s it, honey.’
Darlene closed her notebook, took the letter and stood up to return to her office. Crossing the floor with a provocative sway of her hips, she shot Dave a backward smile. I don’t know what it is about Dave that attracts women, but then I’m a man, so I wouldn’t know.
‘I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve gotten a reply, Harry.’ Daly stood up and shook hands. ‘I’m sure looking forward to this lunch at the Yard next week,’ he said. ‘Alan Cleaver sent me an invite. Will I see you both there?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Depends how my murder enquiry goes. But the food won’t be as good as the embassy’s.’
‘You won’t see me there. I’m not important enough,’ said Dave. ‘Thank God.’
TEN
It was three o’clock before Dave and I arrived at the first of the Aldershot addresses that Tom Challis had identified from the phone numbers in William Rivers’s book.
‘Mr Milner? Mr James Milner?’
‘That’s me.’ Milner was a tall, grey-haired, slender man, probably in his late sixties or early seventies. He wore jeans and a T-shirt and, despite the warm weather, an old sports jacket in the buttonhole of which was a tiny facsimile badge of the Parachute Regiment. ‘What’s this about?’ He spoke confidently, but looked suspiciously at the pair of us.
‘We’re police officers, Mr Milner. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock of New Scotland Yard and this is DS Poole. We’d like to ask you a few questions.’
‘You’d better come in, then, after you’ve shown me some ID, although I don’t know how I can help you London fellows.’
I produced my warrant card and the old soldier nodded his satisfaction.
‘I understand you’re a friend of William Rivers, Mr Milner,’ I said, as we followed him into his sitting room.
‘Yes, I know old Billy Two Rivers. What’s he been up to?’ Milner sat down opposite us.
I was about to tell him when a woman entered the room, looking surprised at seeing us there. ‘Oh, I didn’t know we’d got guests, Jim,’ she said.
‘This is the missus,’ said Milner, as we stood up. ‘These gents are from the Met Police, Sue.’
‘It’s not about your pension, is it?’ Susan Milner’s face adopted a worried expression.
‘Now why on earth should two CID officers from the Yard come here to talk about my pension, love?’ said Milner. He saw my puzzled expression and explained. ‘I left the army after five years, joined the Hampshire Constabulary and did my thirty, Mr Brock. But Sue here’s got some crazy notion that the pension’s going to be docked, what with all the cutbacks the government’s making.’
‘Your husband’s pension is quite safe, Mrs Milner,’ I assured her, ‘but I’m not too sure about mine.’ Milner laughed and I joined in. Dave did not appear amused.
‘Right, now we’ve got that out of the way, what can I do for you?’ asked Milner. He glanced at his wife. ‘A cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss, love,’ he said, but then glanced at me. ‘Unless you’d like something stronger.’
‘No, tea will be fine, Mr Milner. Now, about William Rivers; we found your telephone number in his address book.’
‘Something’s happened to him, hasn’t it?’
‘I’m afraid so. He committed suicide in a Brighton boarding house.’
‘Why the hell did the old boy top himself?’ Milner seemed genuinely surprised. ‘And in Brighton, of all places.’
I felt that I could be more open with Milner as he was an ex-policeman, and explained about the scam to which Rivers had fallen victim. ‘At first,’ I continued, ‘I thought that losing that much money might’ve been too much for him to bear. Or even admit to.’
‘Doesn’t sound like the Billy Rivers I knew,’ said Milner, with a shake of the head.
‘But it turned out that he was suffering from incurable pancreatic cancer. The pathologist’s diagnosis was that he’d only got days to live.’
‘Poor old bugger,’ said Milner. ‘He must’ve been in a hell of a lot of pain. What did he do, hang himself?’
‘No, he shot himself with a two-two pistol.’
‘Where the devil did he get that from? I suppose he must’ve “liberated” it on some operation. Typical of Billy, is that.’
‘How did you come to meet him? As far as we know he was in the SAS, but you were a Para, weren’t you?’ I nodded at his lapel badge.
‘That’s true, although he kicked off his career in the Paras. It was later, well before I met him, that he transferred to the SAS, but then he came back to our battalion as regimental sar’nt major. I’d just made it into the sergeants’ mess and Billy put the fear of Christ into us young sergeants and into the whole battalion. A real tartar was Billy, and the Paras weren’t exactly shrinking violets, if you know what I mean. Anyway, he was only there for about a year before he took his pension.’
‘Any idea how he acquired that much money, Mr Milner?’ queried Dave.
‘Now you’re asking, Skipper,’ said Milner with a crooked grin, ‘but it won’t hurt to tell you now he’s dead. He was in the army of occupation in Germany straight after the war was over. He must’ve been about nineteen then. In those days you could make a killing on the black market. From what I heard most of the squaddies were at it. Flogging all sorts of things to the natives: fags, coffee, soap and Scotch; in fact anything that might bring in a bit of cash. There was bartering going on an’ all. I heard of one corporal who’d bought a Mercedes for twenty cigarettes, and a quartermaster who acquired a house for two bottles of Scotch. That sort of gear was the currency, you see, because after the war the Reichsmark had collapsed and the new Deutschmark wasn’t really up and running. But the Germans never smoked the fags or drank the Scotch; they just used the stuff to trade.’
‘Wasn’t it risky?’ asked Dave.
‘Very. If you got captured by the military police it was a court martial and a stretch in the glasshouse. But Billy got away with it and so did a lot of the others. But I do remember that our cook-sergeant got done for flogging army rations to the Germans. He was busted down to private and did six months in Bielefeld military corrective establishment. And his German wife got done by the German police for receiving. Serve ’em right; flogging the lads’ rations was a definite no-no. It was OK nicking army property off each other, but personal property and rations were definitely taboo.’
‘And you?’
‘I wish! It was all over by the time I got out there. The West Germans had got their sovereignty back and were better off than we were.’ Milner sighed, presumably at regret for having missed that sort of opportunity. ‘But how did this all come about? I mean, Billy falling for a scam of that sort. Doesn’t sound like the Billy I knew. He might’
ve run a scam or two, but I never thought he’d’ve got caught by one.’ He broke off as Susan Milner entered with a tray. ‘Ah, the tea.’
Mrs Milner poured the tea and handed it round before returning to the kitchen. Now that she was satisfied that her husband’s pension was secure it appeared that she had no further interest in why we were there.
I decided to level with Milner and told him about the three murders we were dealing with. ‘It crossed my mind, Mr Milner, that Rivers, being ex-SAS, might’ve decided to take the law into his own hands.’
‘Not a chance.’ Milner scoffed at the idea. ‘Billy might’ve sold fags and coffee to the Germans, but that was it. Mind you, he must’ve been well into his eighties by the time he died. What does surprise me though is that he didn’t report this scam to you lot.’
‘We only found out as a result of a report from the German police,’ I said. ‘But d’you think he might’ve mentioned it to one of his SAS mates who decided to take revenge on Rivers’s behalf?’
Milner shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, Mr Brock,’ he said.
‘Any idea why your phone number was in his address book?’
‘That was one of those funny things that sometimes happens.’ Milner stopped to offer us cigarettes and light one for himself. ‘After he packed in the army, I got a Christmas card from him out of the blue and we exchanged them from then on. It became a sort of ritual. Every now and then he’d ring me up and ask how I was getting on and how the lads in the battalion were. Not that I could tell him; I hadn’t seen him in years and I’d been out of the army for a long time by then. But I got the impression that his mind was going a bit, so I humoured him by telling him that everything in the garden was lovely. But he did come down here to Aldershot – to Browning barracks – for a reunion in about, what, nineteen ninety, I suppose, but I never actually met him again after that. We kept meaning to make a meet, but somehow it never came off.’
‘Thanks for your time, Mr Milner,’ I said, as Dave and I stood up. I gave him one of my cards. ‘If you think of anything else, perhaps you’d give me a bell.’
‘Yes, I will. If you hear when the funeral is, I’d be grateful if you’d let me know. I’d like to see the old boy off.’
‘Yes, of course, and thank Mrs Milner for the tea.’
The next two old soldiers we visited in the Aldershot area had each been in the Parachute Regiment, but neither of them was able to tell us as much as James Milner had done. And neither of them appeared capable of killing anyone. Not now. That left the one in Bordon.
It was about thirteen miles from Aldershot to Bordon and Dave covered it in a terrifying twenty minutes.
The woman who answered the door must’ve been at least seventy, and was grey-haired and stooped.
‘Yes, what is it?’
‘Would you be Mrs Crabtree, by any chance?’
‘Yes. What d’you want?’ Mrs Crabtree peered closely at us, as though she was short-sighted but too vain to wear glasses. Or had forgotten where she’d put them.
‘We’re police officers, madam,’ I said. ‘Is Mr Crabtree at home?’
Mrs Crabtree gave a humourless cackle, revealing that she’d lost a few of her teeth. ‘You’ve missed him.’
‘Oh, is he likely to be back shortly?’
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said the woman. ‘I buried him five years back. Is there anything I can help you with?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I was wondering if he’d known a sergeant major called William Rivers. He was in the Parachute Regiment and later in the SAS.’
‘My Sid was a Para, but he never mentioned anyone by that name. He never talked much about his time in the army. He only did his National Service and couldn’t wait to get out, so he said. He hated the army.’
‘I see. Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mrs Crabtree.’
‘That’s all right, dear. I hope you find that Mr Rivers what you’re looking for.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘I wonder why Crabtree was in Billy Rivers’s address book,’ said Dave, as we drove away.
‘Anybody’s guess,’ I said, ‘but Milner did say he thought that Rivers’s mind was wandering. One thing’s certain though: Crabtree couldn’t’ve topped our three victims.’
‘What about Milner, guv?’ asked Dave. ‘Or the other two. D’you think they could’ve had anything to do with the murders.’
‘No chance, Dave. Milner’s an ex-copper, and although a murdering policeman wouldn’t be a first, I very much doubt it. And like the other two, he’s too old to go about topping people.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Dave reluctantly.
We drove on for a while and then I said, ‘I think we’ll let the SAS know about Rivers’s death, Dave, and then we’ll go the funeral. It’s just possible, if my theory is correct, that a closer friend of his than we’ve discovered already might turn up.’
‘Are you thinking that one of those friends might be our killer, guv?’
‘Funnier things have happened, Dave,’ I said.
‘Yeah, and right now we need something to happen.’ Dave swung on to the A31, put his foot down and overtook a Polish articulated lorry.
Horst Fischer called back early on Friday morning.
‘We have searched the apartment at Glockestrasse in Kettwig, Harry, the address you found for Trudi Schmidt on the bank statements that were in Adekunle’s safe.’
‘Anything of interest, Horst?’ I asked.
‘Nothing to connect her with the fraud, Harry.’ Fischer chuckled. ‘But we did find three or four DVDs featuring Trudi doing naughty things. It would appear that she’d been a pornographic actress at some time, and from what I could see, she was quite good at it.’
‘D’you think that she was an innocent party in this fraud?’
‘I don’t think so, Harry. I spoke to the manager of the bank that issued the statements, and he told me that she had opened the account a year ago. Of course, she produced her passport and other identifying documents in accordance with the law, but she never visited the bank after that. All transactions were carried out electronically.’
‘It looks as though she opened the account on Eberhardt’s instructions, and that he or Adekunle handled it thereafter.’
‘That was my thinking. She must have known why the account was being opened and why she wasn’t to have anything to do with it,’ said Fischer. ‘I spoke to the official who deals with the opening of new accounts and he told me that Trudi Schmidt was accompanied by a man at the time, but this official didn’t know who he was. He couldn’t describe him either. I also learned from the bank that every month they sent an email to Adekunle in the UK informing him that account-holder Schmidt’s latest statement was available online.’
‘Didn’t the bank query why those emails should be going to the United Kingdom?’
‘I asked the manager about that. He told me that it wasn’t the business of the bank to query a client’s instructions and that the account holder could have the emails sent wherever she wanted. I also raised a query with our Vice Squad about the DVDs that Schmidt appeared in.’
‘I presume they weren’t able to add anything useful.’
‘Nothing at all really, apart from a few comments about her performance,’ said Fischer, with a guttural laugh. ‘They told me that the company was quite legitimate. They also checked with the tax authorities and that the company that made the DVDs paid its taxes, which is all that seemed to worry the tax people.’
And that, I thought, showed how similar Britain and Germany were when it came to fiscal matters. And pornography.
I told Horst Fischer that Detective Sergeant Flynn was working on the bank statements and that I’d let him know the results as soon as possible.
‘I doubt they’ll tell us much, Harry,’ said Fischer. ‘The money will be out of reach now anyway.’
We were now getting desperate in our search for the killer, and I wondered if there was anything in either Hans Eberhardt’s
house or Trudi Schmidt’s apartment in Germany that would shed some light on our murders. I decided that only a personal look at those residences would satisfy me.
Horst Fischer had proved that he was undoubtedly a capable detective, but he was concentrating his interest on the investigation of the frauds insofar as they affected Germany, rather than searching for something that would point to a killer in England. It might be that some item of evidence that had meant nothing to him might mean something to me.
Taking a metaphorical deep breath, I tapped on the commander’s door.
‘Yes, Mr Brock?’ The commander peered at me over his half-moon spectacles and closed the file on his desk with, it seemed, a degree of reluctance.
‘I have come to the conclusion that it will be necessary for Sergeant Poole and me to go to Germany, sir.’
‘Whatever for?’ The commander’s face assumed a suitably appalled expression, and he took off his glasses.
I explained about the complexity of the murders that, I suggested, had been made even more complicated by the death of Samson Adekunle, and wrapped up my submission with as much CID gobbledegook as I could muster. I trotted out the usual phrases like motive, means and opportunity and threw in a bit about scenes of crime and scientific evidence. I was pleased to see that the boss didn’t understand a word of it, even when I mentioned the pornography.
Nevertheless, he pretended that he’d followed what I was talking about, and appeared to consider my request for some moments before coming to a decision. Of sorts.
‘I think it’s a matter that the deputy assistant commissioner will have to decide upon, Mr Brock,’ he said eventually. ‘Leave it with me and I’ll let you know.’ Oh well, no change there.
Ten minutes later I was summoned to return to the presence. Why the hell won’t he use the phone other than to send for me? It was too much to hope that he’d descend from his paper mountain and actually come into my office.
