1 The Museum Mystery

by John Waddington-Feather

  Donaldson looked blank.

  “He was the fellow lucky not to be sent down for smuggling protected species into the country some years back. You remember, sir?”

  The Super nodded.

  “Mr Whitcliff has friends in very low places, too, sir,” said Hartley smiling. And before his boss could reply, Hartley was through the door with Khan behind him.

  But Hartley also had many friends in low places whom he turned to when he needed help. He looked up one that afternoon.

  Tom Driscoll was a drifter. He’d been born in Keighworth, served in the forces, but couldn’t cope when he came out. He’d never married.

  He spent his life tramping round the country, keeping to familiar patches and holing up every winter in the doss-house at Keighworth. Pithom Hall was a stop-over on his run, which he passed on his way home from Halifax. He was one of the dossers Blackwell had whinged about.

  He knew where to find Tom. Thursday would find him in The Squeaking Rat pub behind Keighworth market. It had escaped demolition in the 1960s when it had become the haunt of dossers and petty thieves. Run-down and badly needing a lick of paint, it stood for some years in a wilderness of derelict land awaiting re-development. Yet somehow it survived.

  When the new market was built in the 1970s, it squeezed itself between two glass-and-concrete superstores, was tarted up and became decidedly up-market. Only then did Keighworth wake up to the fact it had an eighteenth century coaching inn still intact, so Bradford Met slapped a preservation order on it and the brewery tarted it up. Overnight it became all beams, bullseye windows and brass hangings.

  A new clientele moved in. Shop managers called in for lunch. So did the office staff from the nearby banks and building societies; Keighworth’s bright young things drank there at night. But, last of the old regulars, Tom stayed put. The new landlord tried to oust him, but without success. Tom stuck. He hogged the corner next the fireplace in the snug and in the end was left to drink alone. He became, in time, a kind of fixture the new customers joked about and warmed to, occasionally bought a drink for. As long he made no bother he was left to himself.

  Ibrahim Khan accompanied his boss, chatting about Arthur Donaldson as they strolled across town: how Kemsworth had taken on responsibility for the new drugs unit, how Donaldson was keen to button up this case. Inspector Hartley was worried about that. He hated having a case taken out of his hands. It had happened once or twice before and it had gone deep.

  Always it had happened when Donaldson had panicked when one of his high-up acquaintances was involved. “He’ll pass us up as sure as eggs is eggs,” said Hartley, dolefully. “Once he gets wind of the Cairo connection, he’ll poop himself and bring in the Met. This is not his scene at all. Specially now Whitcliff’s involved.”

  They walked in silence a while, enjoying the pale winter sunshine while it lasted. Like Hartley’s mood, the sky was steadily darkening. Then suddenly the inspector brightened and said aloud, more to himself than his companion, “ ‘Auribus teneo lupum.’ ”

  His sergeant looked up.

  “ ‘We have the wolf by the ears’. An old Roman motto. ”

  His sergeant looked perplexed.

  “Our Arthur,” explained Hartley, who was becoming more enthusiastic by the second. “Look. If we put it to him that by solving this case he’s sure to get promotion, perhaps he’ll hang on. Promotion means everything to him. He’s like a rat in a trap, stuck here in Keighworth and we’re getting bitten by him.” He nodded at the pub sign they were approaching and grinned. “Nowhere near as pleasant as the rats which squeak here. Come on. I’m dying for a pint.”

  The Squeaking Rat was a traditional eighteenth century Pennine inn. Low, with stone-slabbed roof and millstone walls and tall chimneys, it was built to lean into the weather when it once stood adjoining green fields on the boundary of the old town. Built to keep rawness out. No tarting up could change that.

  The superstores, though they’d been up less than a decade, looked the worse for wear already. They’d never really mellowed. They’d gone from a trumpeted start eight years before, when they’d won some prestigious prize for looking like a pile of glass and concrete boxes, to something already waiting for the demolishers.

  The pub roof shone rawly and its walls were streaked from a recent shower of sleet. Its windows were small and mullioned Some had had bullseyes installed to make the place look more olde worlde. They needn’t have bothered. The originals had been authentic and looked more attractive. They’d knocked down the old stabling round the back and the outside was a beer-garden in summer; that is, when summer decided to put in an appearance. Most pubs in the area had beer-gardens now. They were used about five days a year, when folk drank themselves daft out of doors and pretended they were on the Costa Brava.

  Inside they’d dug up the old stone flags and put down a wooden floor and carpets. The original bars with their hand-pumps had disappeared, too; replaced with slick measuring taps and lit-up adverts for foreign lagers. But they still served the traditional ale Hartley had been raised on, King’s Old Peculiar.

  Tom Driscoll was in his usual berth, drying out. Steam rose from his sodden overcoat, giving the place a rich atmosphere. He glanced up as the detectives walked in.

  He was a smallish man, tanned and wrinkled from his outdoor life. Though roughly dressed, he kept himself tidy. He sported a trimmed grey moustache and still wore his faded red army beret. He’d a pair of dreamy grey eyes which took everything in, for there was little Tom Driscoll missed when there was beer on the offing.

  “Morning, Tom,” called out the inspector as they entered. “What you having?”

  The tramp drained his glass and nodded at it. “Same as thee,” he said.

  The landlord filled a couple of pints and Khan had his soft drink. Hartley put the glasses on the table and sat down opposite Tom, raising his glass then taking a long drink.

  Tom sat upright, his back straight. He’d lost none of his military bearing whatever else had gone. When he’d drunk, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and looked hard at the two men before him.

  “Well,” he said slowly. “What does tha want, inspector? Coppers don’t buy drinks for nowt.”

  Hartley smiled. “Dead right, Tom. But it’s nowt serious. Just wondered if you’d ever spent the night kipping at Pithom Hall. Y’know, that big house on the moors on the way to Halifax.”

  The other looked at him closely. “Why does tha ask?” he said.

  “So you’ve been there?”

  “Aye. It used to be a reg’lar kip till that bugger who lives in t’ cottage started throwing his weight about. Nobody kips there now.”

  There was a long silence while Tom sipped his beer and stared into the fire. Then he looked up suddenly. “There’s summat fishy goin’ on there, isn’t there, inspector? That’s what tha’s come about. Them weirdos. An’ them pictures on the walls upstairs.” He shuddered as Hartley had done.

  “What weirdos, Tom?” asked the inspector.

  The tramp ignored his question and suddenly wanted to know where Sgt Khan came from, asking him if he knew what went on at the hall.

  “Why?” asked Ibrahim Khan, surprised.

  “Because some of ‘em there are more thy colour than mine,” said Tom. “I thought that’s why the inspector had brought thee along.”

  “He’s my sergeant, Tom. But I’d like to know more about these guys who look like Sgt Khan.”

  “From Bradford doubtless. Big chaps. Bigger than thee, sergeant.”

  “And what were they up to?” asked the inspector.

  The tramp looked at his empty glass and Khan went to the bar to get it re-filled. While he was away, Tom elaborated. He lowered his voice.

  “It were just before they wired t’ place off an’ put them guard-dogs in. T’very last time I were there wi’ me dog.,” he continued. “I’d just got off to sleep, when I heard all these cars draw up an’ doors start banging. Then I saw a lot o’ lights, candles, comin’ from
that place next to t’hall.”

  “The Mausoleum?” said Hartley. By now Khan had returned and was listening wide-eyed.

  “Aye. Where t’ Whitcliffs are buried. Well, they all came from there - dressed up and singin’ this strange stuff. Tha could hardly call it music. It was a kind o’ ghostly chantin’.”

  He couldn’t have described it better. “What happened then?” he asked.

  “I crept upstairs an’ they were all in that room wi’ t’ paintings on t’walls. Stood round a sort of altar.”

  “An altar?” whispered Hartley.

  “Aye. There were candles on it. Black Candles. An’ them weirdos had put on masks, all like animals or birds. As if they were at a fancy dress do. Only they were deadly serious and jabbering away in some foreign lingo,” he said.

  The tramp took a great swig of his beer and said nothing again for some time, gazing steadfastly into the fire, as if to collect himself.

  When he looked up he seemed more scared than ever. “I know tha’ll think I’m goin’ daft,” he began, “but I’ll swear on oath what I saw next was true.”

  “What was it?” said Khan, his eyes like saucers.

  “There were so much smoke and noise I couldn’t rightly make out, but it looked like a fellow wi’ a crocodile’s head had come from nowhere an’ was walkin’ round t’altar - and there were a woman tied to it!” he said.

  “You sure?” asked Hartley.

  “Positive!” said the other. “An’ then it all happened.”

  “What for heaven’s sake?” asked Hartley, now on the edge of his chair.

  The tramp shuddered mightily and said hoarsely, “This one wi’ t’ crocodile head lunged at her wi’ a knife an’ she screamed summat terrible. Then all hell were let loose downstairs. I heard me dog scrappin’ an’ found it fightin’ that bugger’s dog who looks after the place. He’d come sneakin’ round t’back while I were upstairs and found my stuff. O’ course as soon as he touched it, me dog had him. An’ by t’time I got there, his dog an’ mine were at it hammer and tongs.”

  “And then?” asked Khan.

  “The silly bugger went for me wi’ his stick. Daft sod! I weren’t in t’paras for nowt! I floored him before he knew what’d hit him. Then I kicked his dog cold as well, an’ buggered off. All that lot upstairs came rushin’ down an’ I nobbut just made it out onto t’moors an’ hid in that owd quarry off t’main road. I watched ’em all go back inside an’ then over to that place tha said - mauso something or other.”

  “Mausoleum,” said Hartley.

  “Aye. That’s it. They were carryin’ a body. Must ha’ been t’chap I knocked cold. He went out like a light.”

  “I guess it must have been,” said Hartley. But he’d a horrible feeling it wasn’t. And he’d a more horrible feeling he knew who it was, but all he said was, “Like you said, Tom, they were a bunch of weirdos. Kinky black magic, eh? You won’t go back there in a hurry.”

  “Sha’n’t go there again, inspector. Not if tha paid me. There’s summat devilish goin’on, an’ I want nowt to do wi’ it.”

  “Quite right, Tom,” the inspector agreed and thanked him, leaving him with his third pint of King’s Old Peculiar. He’d confirmed what the inspector had suspected. Pithom Hall was being used by some religious sect based on Ancient Egypt. A sect which was linked to the museum murder.

  When they returned to the station they had another surprise. Colonel Mordecai Waheeb had unexpectedly flown in from Cairo and presented his credentials to a very surprised - and angry – Superintendent Donaldson.

  Chapter Eleven

  Donaldson quickly handed over Colonel Waheeb to his duty clerk downstairs. When Mordecai Waheeb turned up, he assumed the superintendent knew all about him and began to explain about his undercover agent being murdered in Keighworth Museum. Then he started talking about some terrorist sect which still worshipped Egyptian gods; and by the time he told Donaldson there was a splinter group of this sect on his patch, the superintendent had had enough. He panicked completely, handed Waheeb over to his clerk, who was good at small-talk, and waited on the boil for Hartley and Khan to put in an appearance.

  “They’re never ever here when I need them most!” he wailed at Sgt Kemsworth, who’d popped in to see his boss about the new drugs unit.

  Kemsworth smiled sympathetically. “That’s what comes of being stuck in a rut, sir. I don’t want to seem disloyal, but they do tend to do things their own dogged way. Dissemination of information isn’t one of their strong points, sir.”

  “Dissemination of information” was another of Donaldson’s pet phrases he’d picked up on the psychology of narcotics course. He had scores of them. And Sgt Kemsworth memorised them all and played them back.

  “I really don’t know what strong points either of them do have,” said Donaldson. “But being stuck here in Keighworth can’t last for ever.”

  “No, sir,” agreed Kemsworth. “Promotion is bound to come.”

  “Exactly,” said the Super. He fiddled a bit with the file on his desk before putting it away. It was the file on Manasas. He’d read through it carefully but there was no mention of anyone coming from Cairo. Not a hint. No fax that Waheeb had spoken of. Nothing.

  He made small-talk with the sergeant while he waited for the other two to turn up. “You going to the lodge meeting on Thursday?” he asked Kemsworth, who was a fellow freemason. In fact, it had been Donaldson who’d got him in.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied.

  “Good. The Chief Constable is coming. He phoned me yesterday but keep it under your hat, Kemsworth. He might have something to tell us. I was discussing your future with him the last time we met. He’s keen to expand his drug squad in Leeds and I mentioned how experienced you were.”

  “Thank you, sir,” fawned Kemsworth.

  “You’ve no idea where Hartley and Khan are, have you?” asked Donaldson. “They told the duty sergeant they wouldn’t be long.”

  “I did hear they were visiting The Squeaking Rat as part of the Manasas investigation, sir,” said Kemsworth.

  “I should hope so, Kemsworth,” growled the Super. “Though Hartley has always been one to mix business with pleasure once he’s inside a pub.”

  He glanced at the clock on the wall and his phone rang. The two detectives were back. He barked down the phone telling them to come up at once. Kemsworth took his leave and smiled slyly as he passed them in the corridor. Hartley asked him why Donaldson was in such a foul mood, but the other only shrugged his shoulders and walked on still smiling.

  They’d scarcely got inside his door when Donaldson yelled, “What the devil’s been going on while I’ve been away? I left strict instruction to be told of any new developments in the Manasas case, and now I find we’re mixed up with Interpol!”

  Donaldson danced behind his desk when he was angry. He was smaller than the other two and distance gave him some sort of esteem. When he stood next to Hartley he was overshadowed, so he kept his distance. He had a habit of going up and down on his toes, too, when he was irritated and he rattled the loose change in his pocket like worry beads. It jingled like mad now.

  Hartley put on his hangdog look and enquired what was the matter. It was like chucking petrol on a fire.

  “Matter!” shouted the superintendent. “Matter! I’ll damn well tell you what’s the matter, Hartley. There’s a Colonel Waheeb from the Egyptian police downstairs, burbling on about some religious freaks here in Keighworth. Some terrorist group which has bumped off Manasas. You’ve known about it for days, yet you haven’t breathed a word to me, Hartley. Who do you think you are? A one-man MI5?”

  Blake Hartley kept po-faced. “No, sir. Just doing my job. I thought it best to wait till you came back, rather than upset you on your course, sir. I didn’t want to put you out.”

  “Put me out!” said Donaldson. “You’ve put me out all right now, Hartley. You, too, Khan. What the hell are we going to do with this Egyptian downstairs? Nobody seems to know anything about him
.”

  Inspector Hartley tried to calm his boss. He explained what had happened about the fax, apologised for not putting it in the file. It had been an oversight. He was quite sure they didn’t need to bring in anyone else. Indeed, Colonel Waheeb had specifically asked him not to. He wanted it all hush-hush and had had clearance from on high. And when Blake Hartley told Donaldson just who the person on high was, the Super sat down, his head in his hands. Hartley almost felt sorry for him.

  When he looked up, all hopes of promotion had evaporated.

  “ I was hoping,” he said feebly, “for a little stock-taking here. Some consolidating on the little progress we’ve made recently, so that the Chief Constable would look favourably on all of us.”

  “You most of all,” thought Hartley, but held his peace.

  “Now we’re knee-deep in something we can’t handle. Just who is this Colonel Waheeb?” he asked.

  “He’s the top Egyptian anti-terrorist man, sir,” said Hartley. “He’s been on to this group for some time. and Interpol has directed him here. It’s called the El Tuban Freedom Group. T.F.G. for short, sir.”

  Arthur Donaldson looked bewildered. As if he was in some unpleasant dream and couldn’t wake up. “El Tuban Freedom Group? T.F.G.?” he murmured.

  “Dr Manasas was an undercover police agent, one of the Colonel’s closest colleagues. They were on the point of cracking this group wide open when he was killed. He’s pretty cut up about it, sir. Same as you’d be if it had happened to Khan or myself, for instance.”

  The piteous look Hartley gave him made Donaldson wince. “I take your point,” he said coldly. “Nonetheless, you’ve dropped a bomb in my lap that could go off any minute.”

  Blake Hartley rubbed his chin. “Never thought of that, sir, but I suppose you’re right. If they’re prepared to bump off Dr Manasas, who can tell where they’ll stop? It could be any of us next.”

  “You really think so?” Donaldson almost whispered, and ran his finger round the inside of his collar.

  Hartley knew he’d gone far enough and played the promotion card. It worked. Donaldson decided to go along with them and let Hartley continue handling the case.