‘This wasn’t exactly a road traffic accident.’ Harry frowned. ‘At least not within the meaning of the Act.’
‘How come that you got it, then?’ asked Detective Inspector Sloan, professionally curious.
‘The caller said there’d been a car accident and so naturally we attended.’
‘And had there?’
‘Oh, yes, there had been a car accident, all right,’ responded Harpe simply, ‘and it was certainly death by motor car. I’ll grant you that.’
‘I wonder how the statisticians will deal with it, then,’ mused Sloan. He’d never felt the same way about statisticians since he’d heard about the one who had drowned in a river whose average depth was six inches …
‘It’s not the numbers game that I’m interested in,’ snorted Harpe.
Sloan toyed with the idea of repeating the old joke about statisticians to Happy Harry but decided against it. Instead he asked: ‘What happened, then?’
‘Funniest thing,’ said Harpe. ‘It was at this meeting of the Calleshire Classic Car Club. They have their get-togethers at …’
‘I know,’ said Sloan. ‘Down at the old railway goods yard.’
‘More’s the pity,’ said Harpe: this was another beef of the Traffic Inspector’s. ‘Now if all the freight went by goods wagon on the railways we’d have half the traffic and a quarter of the problems we get on the roads.’
‘And if all the population stuck to the Ten Commandments,’ said the Head of ‘F’ Division’s Criminal Investigation Department, ‘then I’d be out of a job. What happened, Harry?’
‘Well, you know the goods yard as well as I do. They’ve still got some old platforms down there even though they’ve taken up the tracks as well as the waste ground where the old railway sidings used to be …’
‘Berebury North Station,’ supplied Sloan. ‘That was.’
‘Closed by the good Dr Beeching, I suppose …’
‘No,’ said Sloan, who was Calleshire born and bred. ‘Berebury North closed before the war when the fish trade fell away. The herring failed. What happened yesterday?’
‘Well, they were using the old railway down platform to show off these classic cars. They don’t make them like that any more, Sloan. Beautiful jobs, they are. You should have seen the old Aston Martin they had there. Now there’s a car with everything …’
‘What happened?’
But there was no rushing the Traffic man: he might have been making a statement to the court, his tale was so measured. ‘They’d just got the cars all lined up in a row with their front wheels right up to the edge of the platform so that they could have their photographs taken for some magazine. Lovely to see proper bodywork and real chrome …’
‘Best side to London if it was the down platform,’ observed Sloan.
Irony was always wasted on Inspector Harpe who paused, searching for a good simile. ‘Like so many race horses.’
‘Were they showing their paces too?’ enquired Sloan. ‘And pawing the ground?’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic, Sloan. They all go—it’s just that they don’t go far or so fast these days.’
‘No different really then from any other geriatrics, eh?’ Sloan took a drink from his own cup. ‘And do I take it, Harry, that one of them went far enough to kill someone?’
The Traffic Inspector nodded, his mouth full of sandwich. ‘Sort of,’ he mumbled.
‘While it was on the down platform?’
The nod was even more vigorous this time.
‘It went over the platform?’ divined Sloan.
‘That’s right.’ The sandwich had gone down red lane now. ‘A pearl grey 1961 2.4 Jaguar came off over the edge and fell on to a chap who was thinking of buying it.’ A rare flash of humour burgeoned over Happy Harry’s melancholy features. ‘He bought it all right.’
‘Who was at the wheel?’
‘Didn’t I say, Sloan? That was the interesting thing. No one.’
‘No one?’
‘As many witnesses as any court could want are ready and willing to swear to there having been no one—but no one—in the car when it moved forward. First thing they looked at—after sending for us and the ambulance, of course.’
‘What about the engine?’
‘Ticking over in drive. You see, the owner—a man by the name of Daniel White—was trying to persuade the deceased to take the Jaguar in settlement of some betting debt and was making him listen to how sweet the engine sounded when it took this great leap forward like the Chinese under Mao Tse Tung.’
‘Did the throttle-return spring snap?’ suggested Sloan, whose interest in foreign affairs wasn’t as far-reaching as it should have been. His grandfather had always worried about the Yellow Peril: he was more interested in a newly killed man. ‘Metal fatigue must be a problem in those old things.’
‘First thing we checked after we’d got the boy out from under,’ grunted Harpe. ‘Right as ninepence—the throttle-return spring, I mean. Ned Tolland was dead.’
‘I see.’
‘Mind you, he must have been just in front of the Jag at the time it hit him and a good three feet below it …’
‘Why?’
‘White said he wanted Tolland to stand there to hear the engine running—if he could.’
‘Why shouldn’t he have heard it?’ asked Sloan. ‘Was he deaf or something?’
Inspector Harpe looked disappointed. ‘Don’t you remember that old ad about the Rolls-Royce clock being the only thing you could hear when the engine was running or something?’
‘Harry, I’m not a motor man and I’m not an advertising man, just a plain old-fashioned policeman, detective branch. What about the brakes?’
‘I think,’ said Inspector Harpe judiciously, ‘you could say that the brakes were half on.’
‘Or half off,’ observed Detective Inspector Sloan detachedly.
‘Not that that should have made all that difference,’ said Harpe. ‘According to an independent witness—the owner of the next car along—an old Armstrong Siddeley—paintwork still black as night—they built cars to last in those days, Sloan …’
‘The witness …’ Sloan reminded him. He himself was never prepared to describe any witness, sight unseen, as independent but then, he would have been the first to admit, he was in the detective branch.
‘The witness said that the engine of the Jaguar had been running for quite a little while before the car moved forward apparently all on its own.’
‘Odd,’ agreed Sloan thoughtfully.
‘Apparently Ned Tolland …’
‘The victim,’ said Sloan. There was, after all, no doubt about that.
‘Him,’ said Harpe ungrammatically. ‘Apparently he hadn’t been all that keen on taking the car in the first place. He’d already got an old Lanchester, you see, and anyway the car was worth more than what White owed him.’
‘So there would’ve been a balance payable?’
‘Seems as if that was one of the things that was putting Ned Molland off buying,’ said Harpe, who had obviously been pretty diligent in his way. ‘All White’ll get now, of course, will be the insurance money.’
‘And his debt rubbed out,’ murmured Sloan reflectively, ‘if it was a gaming one.’
‘Must say I hadn’t thought of that,’ admitted Harpe.
‘Brake cable didn’t fail?’ asked Sloan, though he knew Happy Harry would have checked on that too.
‘No.’ Harpe frowned.
‘Why did White leave the engine ticking over and the gear shift in drive?’ asked Sloan. ‘Sounds dangerous to me.’
‘Oh, you can do that with an automatic. No problem.’
‘Well, there was this time, from the sound of it. Why did he do it, anyway?’
‘Like I said, I think he just wanted to impress on Ned Molland how quiet the engine was.’
‘And instead,’ remarked Sloan, ‘he seems to have impressed the engine on him, poor fellow. Well, Harry, put me out of my misery. If it wasn�
�t the brakes, what was it then? Mice?’
‘I don’t think it was mice, Sloan,’ said Inspector Harpe seriously. ‘I think it was just old age and bad luck.’
‘What was?’
‘The hose connecting the manifold to the brake servo breaking just when it did. It’s rubber and I should say that it was pretty badly perished to start with.’ Harry drained his tea and said lugubriously: ‘Only to be expected in a car of that date, of course, though there was a patch of oil on it too and that always accelerates perishing. All it needed was the vibration from the engine running for a bit to fracture it completely.’
‘Then what?’ Sloan held up a hand: ‘But spare me too many technicalities, Harry.’
‘When that hose breaks you lose your vacuum,’ said Happy Harry simply.
‘And we all know that Nature abhors a vacuum,’ said Sloan patiently. ‘So what happens next?’
‘You get a sudden inrush of air into the manifold.’
‘And?’ said Sloan, draining his cup.
‘And that would cause the engine to speed up momentarily.’
‘Would it, indeed?’ said Sloan thoughtfully.
‘And that,’ continued Harpe, ‘would bring the torque converter into operation.’
‘So?’
‘So the car would leap forward before the engine died.’
‘The creditor it was who died,’ murmured Sloan almost to himself.
‘I reckon that White was dead lucky not to have got killed, too,’ said Inspector Harpe. ‘If he hadn’t been standing where he was, to one side, he would have been. More tea?’
‘Thanks,’ replied Sloan abstractedly. ‘Harry, what about the rest of the engine? Did you find anything wrong at all?’
‘Not a thing. I went over the inside, too.’ He sighed. ‘I checked the dashboard. Lovely piece of work …’
‘What is?’ said Sloan, his mind elsewhere.
‘The dashboard. Polished walnut. You don’t see that sort of thing any more these days.’ He sighed again. ‘I’d quite forgotten how good real leather smells.’ Inspector Harpe got to his feet. ‘Another round of sandwiches, too? Ham, wasn’t it?’
‘No, thanks. Just the tea.’ Sloan sat and stared unseeingly round the police canteen, his mind elsewhere, until Inspector Harpe came back.
‘One tea, no sugar, coming up …’
‘Harry, that was no accident last night.’
‘What?’ said Harry, lowering his cup without drinking anything. ‘Sloan, are you saying that …’
‘I am suggesting that the car might have a lovely smell but that the accident has a very nasty one.’ He leaned forward. ‘Listen, Harry, suppose this man Daniel White created just the right degree of perishing in the vacuum pipe himself and knew that the vibration caused by letting the engine run for a little while would mean that sooner or later it would be bound to fracture …’
‘Having carefully placed his victim in front of and slightly below the car before it shot forward,’ contributed the Traffic man intelligently.
Sloan nodded. You could say this for old Harry: he wasn’t slow to cotton on. ‘And having set things up so that he wasn’t in the car himself …’
‘Neat, I call it,’ said Harpe appreciatively.
‘All White had to do,’ said Sloan, ‘was to stand well back himself and he’s in the clear in both senses. How to lose a creditor and collect on the insurance in—er—one fell swoop.’ He drained his tea. ‘I’d say you were dealing with murder, Harry.’
‘Oh, no, I’m not,’ said Inspector Harpe vigorously. ‘You are, Sloan. It’s not my department. I’m Traffic, remember?’
ONE UNDER THE EIGHT
‘Ah, Sloan, there you are.’ The Assistant Chief Constable looked up from behind a very large desk indeed. ‘Come along in.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Sloan warily. He had no idea why he had been summoned so suddenly to this august presence. It couldn’t be for a breach of discipline because in that case the rules and regulations called for him to have had a rousting from his own Superintendent first and he hadn’t.
‘And take a seat.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Detective Inspector Sloan didn’t relax. Although as far as he knew he hadn’t blotted his copy-book, in these post-Sheehy days you never could tell.
‘I dare say, Inspector,’ the Assistant Chief Constable stroked a lean chin, ‘you like to be kept in touch with what’s going on in your manor.’
‘Naturally, sir.’ That was a safe enough thing to say, surely?
The Assistant Chief Constable steepled his long bony fingers. ‘It’s rather a delicate matter.’
‘I understand, sir.’ And Sloan thought that he did. The Assistant Chief Constable was unusual in that as well as being a university graduate, he was unmistakably a member of Calleshire’s upper crust of County families. Well connected, it was called. It wouldn’t be altogether surprising, then, if one of Calleshire’s gratin did have a serious problem, for it to reach first—and quite informally—one of their own.
Sloan cast about rapidly in his mind. There had been no rumour of trouble at Calle Castle and as far as he knew none of the Earl of Ornum’s notoriously high-spirited family was in difficulties just now.
‘One has to be so careful,’ said the ACC vaguely, ‘when—er—outside agencies are involved. Protocol and so forth.’
‘Quite,’ said Sloan. It wasn’t the Duke of Calleshire, then.
‘Tact and diplomacy, Sloan. That’s what we need.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Or the Earl of Ornum’s younger sons.
‘And total—er—reliability.’
Sloan made a noncommittal sound far down in his throat. He wasn’t pledging himself to a conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice for anybody. Discretion, yes; privilege, no.
‘Don’t want the Constabulary to be seen putting its oar in too heavily either, of course, even though it’s our own bailiwick.’
‘No, sir,’ said Sloan, still mystified.
‘Nothing in writing, naturally.’
‘I see, sir.’ Now that Sloan came to look properly at the ACC’s desk he saw that in fact there was nothing on it.
‘Quite a tricky business, actually.’
‘What outside agency, exactly, sir?’ They’d got a nutter who lived under the railway arches in Berebury who attributed all his difficulties to unnamed ‘outside agencies’.
‘Good question, Sloan.’ He nodded and said ‘They were a bit cagey about telling me what they were called.’
‘I see, sir.’ The chap under the arches at Berebury would never be specific either.
‘It’s one of these new Intelligence outfits that’s a bit wary of saying exactly what it does.’
‘Ah,’ said Sloan.
‘Department K is what we’re to call it. Run by someone known only as Troy.’
‘A woman?’
‘Could be,’ agreed the ACC. ‘They usually are these days.’
That women were better at Intelligence work was something some male chauvinists found hard to accept. The others merely attributed it to a natural talent to deceive.
‘And there’s something in my—our—patch, sir, that interests them?’ said Sloan in spite of himself.
‘There’s Sir Paul Markham.’
‘Over at Almstone?’ Even Sloan had heard of him, distinguished scientists being few and far between in the rural hinterland of the market town of Berebury.
‘None other. Clever chap, Sir Paul.’
‘So I’ve heard, sir.’
‘Knows a lot about rare metals.’
‘Does he, sir?’
The Assistant Chief Constable studied his finger-tips. ‘The Ministry of Defence is always interested in rare metals.’
‘I can see that they might be, sir.’
‘Unfortunately’—the ACC sounded genuinely regretful—‘it would seem that the men from the Ministry so to speak are not the only people interested in rare metals—or, rather more pertinently, in Sir Paul Mar
kham.’
‘Who knows all about them?’
‘Just so, Inspector. Happily, it would seem that this interest extends not so much to his person …’
Sloan nodded. It wasn’t a case of murder or abduction that was the problem, then.
‘… as in the outcome of his latest researches into some element called querremitte.’
‘Someone else wants them?’
‘Someone else would appear to have got them,’ said the ACC cogently.
Sloan thought he began to see where he came in. ‘From his house?’
‘Yes. That’s the interesting thing.’ The ACC leaned forward. ‘You see, Inspector, this department …’
‘K?’ This was the sort of thing he’d read in comics when he was still at school.
‘None other. Only hours before they had rigged his house up with what they thought was a totally secure alarm system.’
‘And,’ divined Sloan, who thought he now knew why he’d been summoned, ‘this department doesn’t want anyone to know they’ve failed?’
‘That’s one thing.’
‘And they want to be allowed to find out why before …’
‘How and who, actually.’
‘… their system failed before anyone else does?’
‘You’ve got it in one, Inspector.’
‘And you mean, sir, they want to be left alone to find out without our coming into it at all?’ Sloan sat back a little. ‘On our patch without us, you might say?’
‘Precisely,’ agreed the ACC. ‘And they’re just telling us out of courtesy.’
‘And,’ said Sloan, ‘to stop us taking any action on our own part should anything—er—come to our attention?’
‘Exactly. Or,’ the ACC extended this, ‘even should the loss be reported to us by anyone else. I gather Sir Paul is very, very cross.’ He paused and then added slowly: That’s what they want … I, on the other hand, would like something else, Inspector.’
‘Sir?’
‘It’d be a bit of a feather in Calleshire’s cap if we could get there ahead of them, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Sloan neutrally. He couldn’t very well suggest that the ACC must be joking. There was, after all, his pension to think of.
‘You see, it wasn’t just a simple break-in.’
Injury Time Page 9
