The Chalon Heads

by Barry Maitland

  From the pub Bren tailed them to the address that Wilkes had told him was Keller’s lodging, a large Victorian house with a dozen buzzer buttons at the front door. Keller unwound himself from the back of the Capri with barely a nod to the others and made his way up the front steps of the house. As he reached the door, it opened suddenly and a young woman appeared. She checked herself, startled to see him standing there, then gave a brief smile as she recognised him. He stepped back to let her past, head lowered, then disappeared inside. To Bren it seemed a well-established manoeuvre, two tenants who met occasionally on the stairs and who had tacitly agreed to take no interest in each other.

  Kathy wondered at the task she had been given. When Starling left the interview room with Bren and Brock, Dot had given her a sheet from a memo pad with an address and phone number on it.

  ‘This is Peter White’s address, Kathy,’ she said, as if Kathy should be expecting it. ‘I’ve told him you’ll get there about five.’

  ‘Brock wants me to go there now?’

  ‘That’s what he told me.’ She began to gather up her own and Brock’s papers.

  ‘Do you know this White?’

  ‘I met him a few times.’

  ‘Brock said they fell out over something. Do you know the story?’

  ‘Best ask him,’ Dot said.

  Brock’s loyal Dot, Kathy thought.

  ‘Sammy Starling’s rather eerie, don’t you think?’ Dot said. ‘Like a big porcelain doll. I’m sure Peter White will be interested to hear what he’s up to these days.’

  Kathy slowed as she spotted a front garden filled with roses in spectacular bloom. Dot had warned her about the roses. She parked at the kerb opposite and as she made for the front gate a man straightened upright from among the bushes and stared at her. She was immediately struck by how he was dressed, in a crisp white shirt, dark trousers and polished shoes, as if he’d just stepped out from the office, rather than as a retired man pottering in his garden.

  ‘DCI White?’

  He stiffened and eyed her darkly. ‘Not any more. Come in.’

  He had a moustache, as carefully clipped and groomed as his hair, and a healthy, ruddy complexion. In one gloved hand he was holding a magnifying glass, and in the other a pair of secateurs and a stem of leaves.

  He saw her looking at what he was holding, and said in an ominous tone, ‘I’m in the middle of war . . .’ He paused, then added, ‘Black spot.’ He pointed at the tainted leaves.

  ‘Oh.’ Kathy was reminded of the pirate Pugh in Treasure Island, who had so frightened her as a child, with his terrifying black spots with which he condemned men to death.

  ‘I’ll have a look at this lot inside, under the microscope. I suspect it’s coming from the south-west. From there.’ He indicated without taking his eyes off Kathy’s face. ‘I’m pretty sure of it. The warm breezes over the last few days have been coming from that direction. There’s a fellow on that corner down there . . .’ Kathy turned to follow his pointing finger, towards a distant garden of scruffy rosebushes. ‘Infested. He doesn’t spray, you see.’

  ‘Sounds serious,’ Kathy said carefully, not sure how to take him. His face was expressionless, as if he were setting her a test, and was only prepared to give so much away.

  ‘It is serious,’ he said, and she sensed suddenly that he was angry. ‘I went to see him. I offered to spray his plants myself, at the same time as I did mine, but he took offence. He told me to fuck off.’

  Kathy heard his particular emphasis on the word, as if this were also part of the test.

  ‘Can you believe that? Why does he grow the bloody things if he’s not interested, eh?’

  He stared at her for a moment, then turned on his heel and led the way to the kitchen door at the side of the house. He brushed his shoes carefully on a new doormat, placed the rose stalks, glass and secateurs on the draining board, took off his gloves and ran the tap to wash his hands. The kitchen was as immaculate as the man, everything tight in its place.

  He led her through to a sitting-room, equally tidy, overlooking a back garden filled, like the front, with rose-beds, burgeoning with blooms. Kathy wondered what he did with all the flowers.

  He saw her looking at them and said, briskly, as if it was a business matter, ‘New hybrids, David Austins. Put them in two years ago. Coming on well.’ And then, without a break, ‘Brock sent you, of course. Didn’t care to come himself.’

  ‘He’s very busy. He did say he intended to buy you a pint when he was next over this way.’ It struck Kathy that there was nothing in the room to suggest contact with any other person: no photographs on the mantelpiece, no letters on the empty writing table in the corner, no ornament that might have been another’s gift.

  ‘I doubt that, Ms . . .’ He looked narrowly at her. ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Kathy Kolla. DS.’

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve never heard of you.’

  She heard the contempt in his voice, and sensed him trying it out for effect, as if not yet certain how far he would punish her for Brock’s errors, whatever they might have been.

  ‘I haven’t been with SO1 long—less than a year. When did you retire, Mr White?’

  ‘Five years ago. They say that retirement is dangerous for men—they tend to keel over within a few months. But in my case it didn’t go like that. It was Ruth, my wife, who passed away, not two weeks after I left the job.’ He stared at Kathy, waiting for her response to this.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry,’ but it didn’t seem to be enough.

  ‘Look, I’m very busy right now, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I can spare you the time.’

  Kathy flushed, becoming tired of this game, whatever it was. ‘DCI Brock felt it important to have the benefit of your knowledge of someone.’

  ‘Sammy Starling, yes, his secretary said that when she made the appointment for you. But he didn’t consider it important enough to send someone more senior.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘How long have you been in the force?’ he interrupted.

  ‘Eight years. I was in Traffic for three, then I got into plain clothes. Serious Crime was what I really wanted.’

  ‘Is that so? You’re ambitious, I take it?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘To climb the career ladder, I mean. One of those women with an eye firmly on the main chance, who rush up through the ranks with plenty of help from the equal opportunists.’ He made no attempt to keep the sneer out of his voice as he said this.

  Kathy wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be angry. She said softly, ‘You mean that I should know my place.’

  ‘I was eighteen years in CID, learning policing the hard way, before I got to special operations. Oh, I’ve seen types like you, missy. I’ve seen ’em using people to get where they want to go. You think you can waltz in here and use me, eh?’

  Kathy looked at him, wondering what she had said or done to bring this to the surface. She got to her feet deliberately and made for the door.

  ‘Hang on!’ he called sharply after her, but she didn’t stop until she had it open, then she looked back over her shoulder at him, half risen out of his chair. He suddenly saw in her eyes that she was angry. ‘All right,’ he said grudgingly. ‘I didn’t exactly mean that.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ she said calmly, softly, turned away from him and stepped out on to the path to the front gate.

  She had reached the gate when his voice came after her: ‘Where the fucking hell are you going?’

  She paused again and looked back at him standing in the doorway, his face still not quite certain that she was really leaving.

  ‘I’m going back to work, Mr White. I’m wasting my time here.’

  His expression changed. ‘Hang on! Sergeant! Look . . . look, wait, please.’ He hurried towards her. ‘I—I was out of line there, yes. But you don’t understand . . . how it was . . . the background. I resent the way Brock’s done this, but . . . I will help you.’
>
  Kathy hesitated, not sure, as her anger faded, if there was any point in continuing.

  ‘Please . . . please.’ Now he was begging, and it struck Kathy that he was a very lonely, isolated man whose opportunity for conversation was probably confined to chance encounters in the supermarket or garden centre.

  ‘Might we not start again?’ he urged, and with misgivings, because she didn’t want to go back to Brock empty-handed, she agreed.

  This time he eagerly offered her a cup of tea, which she accepted, and was surprised when he produced a freshly purchased cream cake, as if he had been out specially and had planned this all along.

  ‘Did Brock tell you that we had a bit of a falling out, the last time Sammy Starling came into our lives?’ White said, when they had established themselves in the sitting-room once more.

  ‘He wasn’t specific.’

  ‘I’m not blaming Brock for what happened,’ he said, in a conciliatory tone. ‘But I do blame Sammy, and Brock relied on Sammy, too much, I thought at the time . . . I’m sorry, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Brock said that Starling was being investigated by the Fraud Squad when he produced evidence of corruption against three of their officers.’

  ‘Keller, Stringer and Harley, but most importantly Tom Harley. You heard what happened to him, did you? Did Brock tell you about that?’

  ‘He didn’t say much.’

  ‘No, that doesn’t surprise me.’ A touch of acid returned to his voice. ‘Superintendent Tom Harley, one of the finest police officers I knew. Accused of taking bribes. We all knew that was garbage, and we all admired the way he coped with it, the indignity of it, him a superintendent accused by slime like Starling.’

  Kathy noticed a fleck of white in the corner of his mouth, beneath the neatly clipped moustache, as he paused for effect.

  ‘We all thought Tom was managing all right. He was a very dignified feller. Never let on for one second, to us or to his family, that it was getting to him. But inside it ate him hollow. One afternoon he went home, swallowed two packets of paracetamol and half a pint of whisky and lay down to die. At a particularly low ebb, you see. The trial was looking bad. But his wife found him, and they took him to hospital and pumped him out, and a week later he was feeling much better. New evidence had been found, and he wanted to live after all. Only his liver had been destroyed by the pills. They couldn’t do a damn thing to save him. It took him three months of agony to die.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kathy said. ‘That was tragic. But he should have known better.’

  She saw White bristle, and she added quickly, ‘Brock didn’t mention that.’

  ‘Did he not? I do wonder why.’ The bitterness in White’s voice was strong. ‘It was a matter of trust, of knowing whom to trust. Brock chose to believe little Sammy China, until it was too late.’

  Kathy noted the nickname, which she hadn’t heard before. ‘What about the other two, Keller and Stringer?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ White made a gesture of dismissal with his hand ‘. . . they were guilty all right, no doubt about that.’

  ‘And Brock was the investigating officer?’

  ‘That’s right. He went after them like the blessed furies, Keller and Stringer and Harley, all on the word of Sammy Starling. Harley was innocent, but by the time Brock realised that Tom had done himself in.’ White jerked himself to his feet and went over to the window, staring moodily out at his garden.

  ‘Keller is out of jail now,’ Kathy said, and began the story that Starling had told them. At first White seemed not to hear, but then his face cleared and he gazed intently at her until she had finished.

  ‘So Sammy thinks young Keller has taken his princess, does he?’ he said, with fierce relish. ‘And Starling really does care, does he? Has it really hit him hard?’

  ‘Don’t you think it would?’

  ‘You never knew with Sammy what he felt or cared about, but funny things happen to old men.’

  ‘He’s not old.’

  ‘Same age as me. Sixty-three.’

  Kathy tried to hide her surprise. ‘You made a study of him, when you were with Criminal Intelligence, didn’t you? Brock thought you might have . . . I don’t know, some recollections . . .’ What had he expected her to get from White, she wondered.

  White looked away, then seemed to make up his mind. ‘Some recollections, eh? You just come with me, Sergeant.’

  Puzzled, Kathy followed him out into the narrow hall and across to one of the front rooms. He opened the door, switched on a light and waved her in.

  It was as if she had stepped straight from a suburban semi into the basement of some bureaucratic archive. Industrial shelving completely lined the walls, including the window, which had been boarded up, and contained row upon row of neatly labelled file boxes, classified by number and letter codes. In the centre of the room stood a table with some carefully stacked items of office stationery, a desk lamp, a computer, printer and photocopier. It was like a transplant of a bay from the old Criminal Records Office.

  It seemed that DCI White had left the Yard with copies of a great deal of material. ‘I was afraid they’d throw it out after a while, Kathy, you see, then regret it later.’

  He smiled conspiratorially, and Kathy noted this first use of her first name, as if he wanted to draw her into some form of collusion.

  ‘I may be mad to show you this, Kathy,’ he said. ‘You could go right back to the Yard and get me into serious trouble for having all this. Well?’ He leaned forward intently. ‘Have I made a big mistake, confiding in you, Kathy? Have I?’

  Kathy drew back a little, uncomfortable. The room was claustrophobic, and White’s manner, ingratiating now, seemed not much better than his earlier rudeness.

  ‘The only thing on our minds at present is the whereabouts of Eva Starling . . .’ she said, deciding that she’d better show some encouragement ‘. . . Peter. This is very impressive.’

  But this wasn’t quite enough for White. ‘Yes, Kathy, but can I trust you? Can I really confide in you?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  He said nothing for a moment, staring fixedly at her as if to read her thoughts, to see whether she deserved his trust. Then he nodded, and said, ‘Very well. Sit down at the table, and we’ll see what we can find for you.’

  He didn’t seem to need an index, but went straight to one shelf and brought an armful of files across to Kathy, sitting down beside her at the table. One contained old photocopies of police documents, another court records, a third newspaper reports of the trial, already turned musty and yellow with age, their creases fixed and brittle, although it had been only ten years before.

  ‘He was a cocky young bastard, no question of that,’ White said, showing her a cutting from the Metropolitan Police magazine the Job. It showed a grinning Keller wearing the broad shoulder-pads of an American footballer over the title ‘Top Rusher for London Mets’. ‘All the self-confidence in the world. But we never thought he was bad. Not until Starling dumped on him.’

  ‘Is there any question about his guilt? Could Starling have framed him?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not in the case of Keller and Stringer. In the months after Tom Harley tried to take his own life, their defence collapsed. At the end, no one seriously believed they hadn’t done what they were accused of. There were some, though, who thought it was excusable, and thought their sentences too harsh. Exemplary, was the judge’s word.’

  ‘You? Did you think it excusable?’

  White hesitated. ‘Compared to—’ Then he stopped himself. ‘No, no. It wasn’t excusable.’

  ‘Compared to what?’ Kathy said. ‘Compared to Sammy Starling?’

  White lowered his eyes. ‘You’re a bright one, aren’t you, Kathy?’

  For a moment Kathy thought his tone was almost flirtatious.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Compared to Starling. But that was my fault, see.’

  ‘How was it your fault?’

  ‘
Oh . . . he was my personal target, if you like. Is that the right word? No, a target is too passive a thing. Sammy was never passive. My nemesis, is that it?’

  He frowned and stood up and went to a shelf containing reference works, where he pulled down the Shorter Oxford. ‘Yes . . . not the first meaning, see, the agent of retribution, but the second meaning of nemesis, “a persistent tormentor; a longstanding rival or enemy”. That was Sammy Starling to me. And it was my fault because I could never find the means to bring him down.’

  He returned to his seat and opened the first of the Starling files.

  ‘Born ’thirty-four in Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, South London. His mother, Mary Pang, died in childbirth. Her husband, and Sammy’s father, was Charlie Pang. The Pangs arrived in London in 1931, God knows where they came from. They had barely a penny, and they changed their name just before Sammy was born. The story is that they had intended to take the name Sterling, as in sterling silver, but somehow it got muddled to Starling.

  ‘Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. What was true was that old Charlie Starling didn’t live much longer than his wife, and the little orphan Sammy was taken in by a family called Hubbard in the same housing scheme, off the Brixton Road. He was never formally adopted, just taken in, the way people did in those days. Sammy China, the kids called him, a bit of a novelty. Later on, two of the Hubbard boys ended up working for Sammy, and the youngest girl, Sally, became housekeeper to him and Brenda. You met Sally? No? Quite a character, she is.

  ‘Sammy was a bright little kid by all accounts, and the Hubbards did their best for him. They were a good, solid, working-class family, and it wasn’t them taught him to be a villain. I used to think he was more a cuckoo than a starling, a cuckoo in the Hubbards’ nest. If anyone did the teaching, it was Sammy, who began to make a bit of a name for himself in the black market after the war. I think it’s in their blood, don’t you? Dodgy trading . . .’ He saw the look on Kathy’s face and realised he was on shaky ground again.