Starling looks devastated as the full extent of their betrayal sinks in. ‘I got expert opinion,’ he whispers. ‘I had the first few lots checked, to make sure . . .’
‘Dr Waverley?’ Sally says.
‘You know him?’ Brock asks.
‘Oh, yes. He was a smart one. He came to Walter’s shop one day and said that he’d been checking some of the stamps that Sammy had bought from him. He didn’t come right out and say they were forgeries, and Walter got the impression he wasn’t absolutely sure. He was fishing, probing Walter’s story, letting him know he had doubts about the whole thing. He certainly got Walter worried. Finally he said, “Tell you what, Mr Pickering, why don’t you suggest to your seller that they might like to pay me a fee to authenticate the stamps before they come to Mr Starling, so as to avoid the embarrassment that might arise if I were to find that some of them weren’t quite right?” Walter agreed to put the proposal to his client, and we decided we had to go along with it. Ten per cent, he took. That’s what we called him, Dr Ten Per Cent. The rest was divided equally between Walter, Eva, Rudi and me.’
‘Do you have records of what was paid to Waverley?’ Brock asks.
‘Walter kept a book of all Raphael’s transactions, money in and money out.’
‘I’ve got it,’ Starling says, pulling a small notebook from his hip pocket. ‘He gave it to me. But I can’t make out who the people are.’
‘He gave them nicknames. Waverley is Afghan, because Walter said he reminded him of an Afghan hound, tall and thin and over-bred.’
Sally gets slowly to her feet, goes over to Starling, puts her arms round him and draws him to her, so tiny and frail that she makes him look ungainly large, and he sags and begins sobbing in her arms.
‘Poor Sammy,’ she whispers. ‘Poor Sammy . . .’
Eventually he lifts his head to Brock and says, ‘Who killed her, Mr Brock? Who killed my Eva?’
‘Someone who hates us both, Sammy. They took everything from you and made you look like a murderer, and for good measure they made me look like a thief. I think it’s time we sat down together and put an end to it, don’t you?’
Starling nods, and wipes the back of his hand across his eyes. Brock gets stiffly to his feet and goes over to Desai. ‘Leon, old chap,’ he whispers anxiously, ‘can you hear me?’
The head stirs and gives a little nod. Thankfully Brock takes hold of the tape and peels it off, layer by layer, until Desai is blinking up at him ruefully. He has a large bruise on his left temple, and he winces with pain as Brock frees his wrists and ankles, so that Brock tells him to stay on the floor and wait for help.
Brock is the first through the front door, waving into the darkness, then shading his eyes when the floodlights come on, and holding Starling’s rifle up for them to see. He turns back to the doorway, and Starling comes through, blinking tentatively, hands in the air.
He points down into the darkness of the central courtyard towards the streetlights at the far end, illuminating the waste-ground which they had driven past earlier that evening. ‘That’s where I was going to get you and Raphael to come, Mr Brock,’ he says. ‘One bullet each for you, I had. Then one for me.’ He sighs hopelessly. ‘I couldn’t have got things more wrong, could I?’
‘It hasn’t been your week, Sammy.’
‘You can say that again. I reckon I must have killed a Chinaman.’
He grins weakly at Brock, who smiles back encouragingly, and is then startled to see a small black hole appear in the centre of Starling’s forehead, followed a moment later by the ringing smack of a gunshot. Without changing his expression, Starling drops like a sack of potatoes to the floor.
There are sudden shouts, cries from the darkness. Brock drops to his knees, pulling Sally down with him, calling to Desai to stay inside. Sally is wiping stuff from her eyes, spray from the exit wound in the back of Starling’s head.
18
The Source
Tim Waverley objected strenuously to being roused at dawn. As he was brought down to the interview room he didn’t shrink from making comparisons between the Metropolitan Police and the KGB to the silent officers who accompanied him. He became quiet, however, when he saw the grim-faced pair waiting for him, Brock meeting his eyes without acknowledgement, and McLarren with eyebrows bristling furiously at the sheet of paper clutched in his hands.
‘Sit down,’ McLarren said, without preliminaries, and immediately cautioned him.
Waverley looked from one to the other without replying, now very alert. He tried to make out what was written on the paper McLarren had set aside on the table. It appeared to be a list of some kind.
‘Dr Waverley, we require you to make a full statement of your involvement in the events which have led to the death of Eva Starling,’ McLarren went on.
Waverley paled a little. He took his time replying, sweeping the errant lock of hair back from his forehead. ‘I’ve had no involvement in Eva Starling’s death, Superintendent. Perhaps I should say no more until I get legal advice.’
‘As you wish,’ McLarren said.
‘What exactly am I suspected of?’
‘Suspected is no longer the relevant word, Dr Waverley. You are known to have been a party to a fraud involving the sale of forged stamps to Mr Sammy Starling.’
‘Oh, really?’ Waverley said carefully. He was momentarily disconcerted to notice a black stain on the sleeve of Brock’s blue shirt—blood, surely—as if the man has been bleeding profusely. ‘Have you found Mr Starling then?’ he asked, tearing his eyes away from it. ‘The last time we spoke he was on the run. Has he accused me of something?’
‘This,’ said McLarren, sliding the sheet of paper across the table, ‘is a full schedule of payments you received from Mr Walter Pickering in respect of the sale of forged stamps to Mr Starling.’
Waverley flushed. ‘I certainly carried out inspections for Pickering, authenticating new material—I’ve already stated that.’
‘Most of these stamps you never saw. You simply took ten per cent from the seller in order to keep quiet about their dubious quality when you reported to the buyer, from whom you also took a fee. Dr Ten Per Cent, they called you. Did you know that?’
Waverley, who had been about to make some other point, stopped short and his colour deepened. He took the sheet of paper cautiously and examined it.
‘How much, exactly, do you know?’ he said at last. ‘I mean, if you already know it all, there’s not a lot of point in my saying anything, is there?’
‘We want your version. And your co-operation will be noted and the court advised accordingly. That is likely to be especially important when it comes to the murder charge.’
‘What murder charge?’ Waverley jerked up straight, sending his hair flopping forward again. He adjusted hair and spectacles in one fluid movement. ‘You don’t imagine that I was involved in any murder?’
‘You were a party to the kidnapping of Mrs Starling.’
‘No!’
‘What about the business of switching envelopes that morning at Cabot’s, before the auction?’
‘Oh—you know about that? You have found Starling, then, haven’t you? He’s told you.’
McLarren gave no response. Waverley took a deep breath before continuing. Again he blinked at the sleeve of Brock’s shirt, trying to make out if he was hurt.
‘I have the greatest admiration for Raphael, you know,’ he said, with some little defiance. ‘Whatever else he may have done, he is an absolute angel when it comes to forging postage stamps. I think I would have kept quiet even if they hadn’t offered me money, just to see what else he’d come up with. And I just loved the story, didn’t you? The love affair, and all that. And everything was going along just fine, until, what, a week, ten days ago? Is that all it was? It seems so much longer.
‘Anyway, I got a phone call from this character, who said he was representing somebody who wanted me to authenticate a stamp for them. I said fine, and asked who had recommended me, and he s
aid Mr Raphael. That stopped me short, as you can imagine. Then he mentioned one or two names, Pickering and Starling and Chalon Heads, and the way he said these things was quite intimidating. The nub of it was that he knew exactly what was going on, and the price of his silence was my co-operation and confidentiality in the matter of his client’s business.
‘At the end of last week, Friday it would have been, I think, he contacted me again, and asked if I’d had anything to do with Mr Starling recently. I was very surprised, because I’d just spent the morning talking with you and Mr Starling about the third ransom note, and about the possibility of making a copy of the Canada Cover. I mentioned something of this to him, and he was extremely interested. He insisted on our meeting, which we did later that afternoon, at a place in Hyde Park which he nominated.
‘He made me go through everything again, every detail. He wasn’t a very impressive character, yet he was extremely intimidating, mainly because he knew so much about me and about the business with Pickering.’
‘What was his name?’
‘He said just to call him Ronnie. He gave me the number of his mobile.’ Waverley took his wallet from his pocket and handed over a card on which a number had been written.
‘His phone rang, actually, when I was there, and he told whoever it was on the other end what I’d been telling him. At the end of it he told me that his client would require my services on the following afternoon, to authenticate a special stamp, and that’s when I realised that he must be referring to the Canada Cover, and that these must be the kidnappers.’ He shook his head. ‘That scared me stiff, I can tell you. He saw that, and he threatened me, said that his client wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if I messed it up or breathed a word to anyone. I had no choice, you see. I had to co-operate.’
Waverley paused for a drink of water, his hand shaking as he lifted it to his mouth.
‘That night he phoned me again. I was at the forensic science laboratories at the time, and I was terrified, taking his call there of all places. He asked me how the copy was going, and I said it looked as if we could have something good enough by the next day, in time for the auction. Then he said he had two instructions for me. The first was that I had to make sure that the copy wasn’t used, by throwing doubt on its quality when we met to make the final decision next day. The other, which terrified me even more, was that I had to make sure that Chief Inspector Brock took charge of the copy, and to exchange it at the last minute for an identical but empty packet. When I asked why, he said they were going to make it look as if he had stolen the real stamp, and that would take the heat off them.’
‘It had to be Chief Inspector Brock?’ McLarren asked.
‘Yes, no one else.’
‘And presumably they paid you for this little service.’
‘They . . . promised me payment, yes. But I never received it, under the circumstances.’
‘How much?’
‘Fifty thousand, once they had sold the Canada Cover on to this buyer they had lined up.’
‘Well, that must have made you feel a wee bit braver. What do you mean, under the circumstances?’
‘Well, because of what happened—I mean, it all went so amazingly well, at first. I was absolutely petrified, in a room full of police, that someone would see me switching the packages, but they didn’t. I gave Chief Inspector Brock the empty packet and kept the copy to hand over to Ronnie later that afternoon, when I had to meet him to authenticate the Canada Cover that Mr Starling had delivered to the airport. But later, at lunchtime, when I looked in my bag, I was stunned to find that the envelope had gone.’
‘Oh, yes?’ McLarren said, keeping his voice neutral.
‘And how did you account for that?’
‘I couldn’t! I was absolutely dumbfounded. And frightened, too, about what Ronnie’s client would say. It was only when I met Ronnie later that afternoon that I realised what had happened.’
He took another gulp of water.
‘Go on,’ McLarren urged impatiently.
Waverley glanced nervously at Brock, who had said nothing at all, had just sat there observing him balefully, like Moses in a bloodstained shirt. ‘Er . . . Yes, that afternoon, I met Ronnie in a quiet back-street in Southall. I had some portable equipment in the car—a small microscope. I got a shock when I studied the cover and realised that it was the copy that had gone missing from my bag. And then I understood what must have happened. It was obvious. When we met that morning at Cabot’s, there had been an expectation that we would use the copy to fool the kidnappers. Sammy was keen on the idea. But after I’d given my opinion on the copy, that all changed and the police wouldn’t agree to it. Sammy left the room at that point, and he didn’t see me hand the package over to Chief Inspector Brock. When he returned, we broke up to get coffee, and he, assuming the copy was in my bag, must have taken it. Then later, on the way to the airport, he exchanged it for the real cover, hoping the kidnappers wouldn’t be able to tell.’
He shook his head. ‘It was a tragic miscalculation. Ronnie was beside himself when I told him. He went off in a fury, warning me to keep everything to myself. Later, when I heard what had happened to Mrs Starling, I realised just how savagely they had reacted to Sammy’s attempt to cheat them. My God, I had no idea things would go so far. But I couldn’t say anything, could I? I was implicated by then, wasn’t I?’
He stared at them both, vainly seeking some kind of sympathy, the limp lock of hair over his right eye left untouched.
‘You were indeed,’ McLarren said grimly. ‘So where is the real Canada Cover now, Dr Waverley?’
‘Why, Sammy Starling has it, doesn’t he? He never handed it over.’
Later that morning they pulled Ronnie Wilkes off a flight bound for New Zealand, where his sister lived. He had turned up at Heathrow not long after the morning news bulletin broke the story about the murder of Sammy Starling, and booked the first available flight. The plane had already taxied to the end of the runway, and Ronnie was safely strapped in his seat, relief soaking through him, when the main cabin door was reopened and the detectives came aboard and arrested him. The anticlimax at the end of all that nervous strain made him throw up as soon as his feet touched the ground, and he made little attempt to deny the accusations that McLarren levelled against him in the Heathrow police station.
Ronnie had been approached, he said, a couple of years ago, by someone acting for a former police officer, who had a grudge against Sammy Starling. This man knew that he worked for Sammy, and also knew about Ronnie’s gambling, and that he had been lately getting badly into debt. He had offered money, a little to be going on with, and the promise of a lot later, if Ronnie would give him information about Sammy. It had been innocuous at first: the man, who called himself Mr K, would ring him up every few weeks, they would chat about the details of Sammy’s life, and a few days later an envelope would arrive for Ronnie with some money.
Then gradually Mr K began to focus on Eva’s trips to town. He insisted that Ronnie clear with him what he would report to Sammy about Eva’s movements, and when he discovered her association with the stamp dealer Walter Pickering, and began to suspect her drug habit fed through the Cinema Hollywood, Mr K had instructed him to say nothing of these things to his employer. He had never been entirely sure what Eva, Pickering and Waverley were up to, but from the way Mr K spoke about it he began to feel that he knew more, and was following up these leads himself, letting Ronnie know only what he thought necessary.
Several times he had thought of telling Sammy what was going on, but he’d needed the cash, and the longer it went on the more difficult it was to come clean. The crunch came when Mr K instructed him to steal three stamps from Sammy’s collection. He had been very particular as to which ones he wanted, from some country Ronnie had never heard of. He’d had to wait several weeks before the opportunity presented itself, with Mr K phoning him up every other night, ranting away at him to do what he was told or else. That’s when he’d first begun to realis
e that Mr K was a nutter, and that it might be dangerous to cross him.
‘So who was this Mr K?’ McLarren demanded.
Ronnie had never met him face to face, and was never given a phone number or address. But when Sammy told him one day that he wanted him to follow an ex-copper whose name was Keller, he’d put two and two together. When he’d reported this to Mr K, the man had laughed, and told him what to tell Sammy, and not to bother following Keller.
‘But Marty Keller didn’t get out of jail until this last April,’ McLarren objected.
‘Yeah, well, it was his brother, Barney, wasn’t it? Getting things ready for when Marty came out. Stands to reason. Must have been him.’
‘And where is Marty Keller now, Ronnie? Where can we find him? He’s not been seen at his flat in days.’
‘He rents a mechanic’s workshop in Wembley. That’s where he keeps his gear. There’s a bed there, and a toilet. It’s where he kept Eva. That’s where he’ll go to ground. Only you won’t take him. He told me he wouldn’t go back to jail again.’
Ronnie was right. Marty Keller fired just one shot when armed police surrounded the workshop. The police doctor pronounced him dead at 1307 hours, killed with the same rifle and in the same manner as Sammy Starling.
Once he was certain that Keller was dead, Ronnie Wilkes informed police that Keller had told him that he had buried Eva’s body somewhere in the woods above Sammy’s house, the Crow’s Nest.
Jock McLarren felt ambivalent about his triumph. On the one hand he had solved both the most notorious murder of the year and the most significant philatelic fraud of the decade. On the other, his famous Raphael had turned out to be a risible opponent, and the prosecution of the pathetic figures of Sally and Rudi was going to provide plenty of opportunities for snide jokes at his expense within the corridors of Cobalt Square and New Scotland Yard. Of their surviving victims, Cabot’s, as inheritors of one of the finest collections of classic stamp forgeries, were inclined to play down the affair, leaving only the Fitzpatricks. Their best interests seemed to lie in some form of private reimbursement of their lost funds by the forgers. So many key witnesses were dead, or, in the case of Walter Pickering, unlikely to survive a trial. On balance, McLarren thought he might use every bit of his influence to encourage the Crown Prosecution Service to the view that the case against Sally and Rudi might be difficult to pursue. In the public interest, of course.
The Chalon Heads Page 34
