Murder at the Ritz

by Jim Eldridge

  ‘Well, surely that’s good,’ said Coburg. ‘He’ll be impressed that a music star wants to join up.’

  ‘I’m not a music star,’ Rosa corrected him. ‘And I’m not sure it will help. In fact, the opposite. He might think I’m one of those well-meaning but useless people who think just because they can play piano in front of an audience they can do anything.’

  ‘He’ll have a different opinion when he meets you,’ said Coburg. ‘You’ll win him over.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Talking of playing piano for an audience, remember I haven’t got the car, so I think it’d be a good idea to make sure we get a taxi before they all get taken.’

  ‘We could go by bus or Underground,’ said Rosa.

  ‘Taxi,’ said Coburg firmly.

  The Rivoli Bar was packed, word having spread that this was Rosa’s last week appearing there. With every table booked, Coburg was invited to share by Lord and Lady Kerwin, old acquaintances of his family, and they spent a pleasant half-hour catching up, with the Kerwins asking after Coburg’s brothers.

  ‘We understand Charles is in a POW camp in Germany,’ said Lady Kerwin.

  ‘Yes,’ said Coburg.

  ‘So is our Steven,’ she said. ‘I had a letter from him the other day. Very brief – he never was a great letter-writer – but he seems to be coping.’

  ‘Of course he is,’ said Lord Kerwin. ‘They say if you can survive Eton you can survive anything. It’s good preparation for a term in prison.’ He looked at Coburg with a quizzical smile. ‘Did you find that?’

  ‘Fortunately, I never did a term in prison,’ said Coburg.

  At that point Rosa appeared and took her seat at the piano, and all conversation ceased as her fingers stroked the keys and she launched into ‘Georgia On My Mind’.

  They were silent in the taxi on the way back to Hampstead, but it was a comfortable silence, that of close friends and lovers.

  As Coburg poured drinks for them when they were in the flat, he commented that there’d been no sign of Raymond Harris at Rosa’s performances the last few evenings.

  ‘Perhaps he’s lost interest in me,’ suggested Rosa.

  ‘I doubt that very much,’ said Coburg. ‘I just wonder what’s keeping him occupied.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Tuesday 27th August

  Next morning, Coburg hugged Rosa close just before he left for Scotland Yard. ‘Don’t worry about this Mr Warren,’ he told her. ‘Just be yourself. Trust me, you’ll be fine.’

  ‘And if I’m not?’ she asked.

  ‘Try the Red Cross,’ he said. ‘They need ambulance drivers too.’

  The car was waiting for him at Scotland Yard, as Lampson had promised. Coburg collected the keys from the desk sergeant, then went up to his office. Lampson was already in, and Coburg could tell right away that all was not well.

  ‘Morning, Ted. How did you get on in Ramsgate?’

  Lampson shook his head. ‘Both dead, guv’nor. My uncle and aunt.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Look, if you want to take some time off …’

  Lampson shook his head. ‘No, there’s work to be done. I’m better off here.’ He looked deeply saddened as he said: ‘It was worse getting back to Somers Town and telling my mum her sister was dead.’ He looked grim and angry as he added: ‘You should’ve seen the destruction. The whole town looks like it has been flattened. They reckon if it hadn’t been for the tunnels there’d have been thousands dead. And it wasn’t just Ramsgate. All the way there were signs where places had been bombed, and the damage got worse the nearer I got to the coast. They say the bombers are hitting the coastal towns more to soften things up for the invasion the Germans are planning, but I was talking to someone who reckons that what happens is the bombers turn tail when they meet up with our fighter boys over Kent and then just get rid of their bomb loads along the coast before they get to the Channel. Whyever they’re doing it, they’re tearing those towns apart. Thank God for the RAF, otherwise those bombers would be over London.’

  ‘According to the Intelligence services, they’ll be here soon enough,’ said Coburg. ‘Whether or not Hitler destroys the airfields in Kent and Sussex, London will be his next target after Berlin was bombed.’

  ‘When do they think that’ll happen?’

  ‘It’s anybody’s guess,’ said Coburg. ‘The pessimists reckon it’ll only be a matter of days or weeks.’ He looked seriously at Lampson and added: ‘If they’re right, my advice would be to strongly consider getting your son out of the city.’

  ‘Where to?’ asked Lampson. ‘Nowhere’s safe, as I saw yesterday.’

  ‘Not east,’ said Coburg. ‘Somewhere else. To the west. Cornwall. Devon.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone down there, and I couldn’t send him to people I don’t know.’

  ‘Send him away with your parents,’ suggested Coburg.

  Lampson shook his head. ‘They won’t leave. They’re too bloody stubborn.’ The phone rang, and Lampson picked it up. ‘DCI Coburg’s office.’ He looked at Coburg in surprise, then said: ‘Yes, sir. Certainly, he’s here.’ He held out the receiver to Coburg saying: ‘It’s Count Ahmed.’

  Surprised, Coburg took the phone. ‘DCI Coburg speaking. How can I help you, Count Ahmed?’

  ‘I believe it is I who can help you,’ said Ahmed. ‘I had a telephone call from someone yesterday who suggested I talk to you openly and honestly about … the situation. Can you come to my suite at the Ritz?’

  ‘I can indeed,’ said Coburg. ‘When?’

  ‘Shall we say in an hour?’

  ‘An hour it is,’ said Coburg. ‘Thank you, Count Ahmed. This is very much appreciated.’

  He hung up.

  ‘Change of tone from the other day, by the sound of it,’ commented Lampson.

  Coburg smiled. ‘Indeed.’ He stood up and put the car keys on Lampson’s desk. ‘I’ll walk to the Ritz. The exercise will do me good. I’ll leave you with the car so you can carry on chasing up possibles as to who killed Mel McGuinness and Thackeray.’

  ‘Will do, guv,’ said Lampson. ‘All the best at the Ritz.’

  Chesney Warren was a small man, neatly dressed in a dark three-piece suit. He had a curling moustache, one tip of which touched a long, jagged scar across one cheek from his mouth to his ear. He gave Rosa a welcoming smile as he opened the door of his office to her knock.

  ‘Miss Weeks, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I saw you perform at the Ritz last week, and it was the most wonderful evening.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Warren. Your receptionist mentioned you’d been.’

  ‘Yes, she said you were just a relative.’

  ‘I thought I’d keep things separate,’ said Rosa.

  ‘Despite that, I still wondered if it might be the same person, and as soon as I saw you I was delighted to see it was, so I could congratulate you in person.’ He gestured at the chair opposite his desk. ‘Please, do sit down.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The office was spartan: simple furniture, charts on the walls showing which people were where, along with work schedules for the coming week. The books on the shelves were mostly medical manuals and pamphlets from national and local government.

  ‘Miss Phelps said you wanted to be an ambulance driver,’ said Warren, taking his own chair.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘I want to do something to help the war effort. I used to drive lorries for my father’s grocery business in Edinburgh when I was younger, so I thought it was a skill I could put to good use.’

  ‘But why ambulances?’

  Rosa hesitated, then told him: ‘A friend of mine was killed the other night when Oxford Street was bombed. I was with her when it happened. There were many others lying injured and I thought: if they could be taken to hospital quickly, many of them would survive.’

  Warren nodded. ‘I understand.’ He looked at a note. ‘Miss Phelps said you’d done a first aid course.’

  ‘A long time ago,’
Rosa admitted. ‘When I was in the Girl Guides.’

  ‘What do you know about the St John Ambulance?’ asked Warren.

  ‘I know they help the sick and injured,’ said Rosa.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Warren. ‘During times of war, such as now, we work with the Red Cross as a Joint War Organisation, essentially doing the same kind of work, going to places where our help is needed.’ He looked at her questioningly as he said: ‘It is often dangerous, going out when a bombing raid is taking place. Until the Oxford Street and City raids the other night, London has escaped; but other places have not been so lucky. Plymouth was attacked last month and one of our crews was amongst the casualties. Would you be able to cope with that threat of danger?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosa. ‘I wouldn’t be here otherwise. I know what I’m letting myself in for. I want to be doing something rather than be in a shelter.’

  ‘In that case, shall we go out to the yard where the vehicles are kept?’

  ‘The vehicles?’ asked Rosa, surprised.

  ‘Yes. Let’s see how you handle an ambulance.’

  Coburg’s reception at Count Ahmed’s suite was in marked contrast to his previous visit. Even the bodyguards on duty at the door seemed conciliatory towards him. The Count offered him coffee. Inwardly, Coburg was wary, having once experienced coffee in Turkey which he found to be more like a thick soup and he wondered whether Albanian coffee would be similarly unpalatable, but was aware that this was a gesture of friendliness towards him and, for the purpose of getting the information he wanted, he accepted with a smile of thanks. As it turned out, the coffee was eminently acceptable, being the Ritz’s own rather than imported from Albania. As he sipped it, Coburg gave a silent thank you to Lady Mainwaring; there was no doubt it was she who’d generated this sudden atmosphere of rapprochement.

  ‘You must excuse my reservations from our previous encounter,’ said Ahmed. ‘I was not sure whether I was speaking to a policeman or an undercover representative of the British government.’

  ‘Just a policeman,’ said Coburg, ‘trying to solve a murder. Or, rather, two murders.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ahmed. ‘You mentioned Albanians before when discussing possible suspects. I can assure you that none of His Majesty’s party are in any way involved in these tragic incidents, but there may be other Albanians in London who might be.’

  ‘Do you have names?’ asked Coburg.

  Ahmed shook his head. ‘No. They are not people I would associate with or choose to associate with. But I think it’s important that you know who these people are, as different and rival factions. Albania is riven politically. There are royalists, who support the King and his family, but there are also nationalists who have their own agenda. And most dangerously, in my opinion, there are the communists. All of these factions are enemies of the Nazis and Mussolini’s fascists, but they oppose one another even more vehemently.’

  ‘I’m guessing that the nationalists and the communists are keen to get their hands on the money His Majesty was rumoured to have brought with him.’

  ‘I’m glad you said “rumoured”,’ said Ahmed.

  ‘A rumour is enough when the figure being bandied around is said to be in the region of two million.’

  ‘I won’t go into the politics of the nationalists because it’s far more complicated than just being about an Albanian identity, with the result that the nationalists themselves are divided into various factions, who all hate one another. They are too busy with this inter-group squabbling to attempt something as large as trying to steal this supposed money from the King in the Ritz. The communists, however, are another matter. They are a much smaller group, but more fanatical about their cause, which is to overthrow the royal family and align Albania with Soviet Russia. And they need something concrete to convince the Russians that they are worth supporting.’

  ‘Something like two million in cash and gold?’ said Coburg.

  ‘Now that would be very concrete indeed,’ said Ahmed with a small smile.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Rosa sat in the driving seat of the ambulance and tried the controls, before switching on the engine: the foot pedals, the indicators, the windscreen wipers, rotating the long handle of the gear lever to check it was in neutral.

  ‘Just reminding myself where everything is,’ she told Chesney Warren, sitting in the passenger seat next to her. ‘It’s some time since I last drove one of my father’s lorries.’

  Ten years, in fact, she ruefully admitted to herself. She remembered the difficulties she’d had with double-declutching when heading up Edinburgh’s steep cobbled streets. Please let me remember how to do it, she prayed fervently. I’m being given a chance.

  She turned the key in the ignition, but nothing happened except a dull clicking sound. She pulled the choke partway out, careful not to give it too much and flood the engine, and turned the key again. Again, nothing happened. This time she pulled the choke out a bit more, at the same time turning the key, and when there was a sharp cough from the engine and it barked into life, she pressed hard on the accelerator, slowly pushing the choke control down.

  She sat as the vehicle vibrated with a low hum and turned to Warren.

  ‘Where to?’ she asked.

  ‘Just round the yard for the moment,’ he replied.

  Rosa drove the ambulance carefully around the perimeter of the yard, taking care not to hit other vehicles and various objects as she maneouvred her way.

  ‘Let’s see you reverse,’ said Warren. He pointed to a space between a car and a van parked by a brick wall. ‘Over there.’

  That’s a bloody narrow space, thought Rosa unhappily. I’m not even sure this will squeeze in there.

  ‘And I don’t want to put any pressure on you,’ Warrern continued, ‘but the van belongs to the St John Ambulance and the car is mine, so I’d appreciate it if you could be careful.’

  Yes, you do want to put pressure on me, thought Rosa with a feeling of annoyance. Then she smiled to herself. And that’s quite right, too. Driving an ambulance is a high-pressure job. She looked again at the gap between the car and the van, sizing it up, and she reminded herself of when she used to reverse her father’s lorry. The first time she’d backed into a pile of crates filled with cabbages, spreading the whole lot all over his yard. He’d taken the cost out of her wages and it had taken her four weeks to repay him. She never hit anything while reversing again.

  But that was then, in a lorry she’d got to know: she knew how wide it was and how long. This was different. This was an unfamiliar vehicle. She remembered her father’s advice: Always think it’s wider and longer than it is. And look in your mirrors.

  She maneouvred the ambulance into position ahead of the space and checked the position of the car on her nearside and the van on the offside.

  Ease it back slowly, she warned herself. That way if you hit something it’ll be a scrape rather than a write-off.

  Carefully she brought the vehicle slowly back, using a light touch on the accelerator and double-declutching between neutral and reverse to keep the ambulance in her control. She used the length of the van to judge when to bring the ambulance to a halt.

  She put it into neutral, pulled on the handbrake and looked inquisitively at Warren.

  ‘Now, let’s take it out on the road,’ said Warren. ‘Turn right when you leave the gates, and then keep taking the first right to bring it back to the yard.’

  Turn right, thought Rosa bitterly. Turning against the stream of traffic. Why not turn left?

  Because it has to be done.

  She took off the handbrake, slipped it into first and moved away, heading for the open gateway to the road and traffic. As she did, she thought: Thank God for petrol rationing and a minimum amount of traffic.

  Coburg returned to the Yard thinking about what Count Ahmed had told him. The Count seemed to believe that the Albanian communists were the ones most likely to be set on liberating the money from King Zog’s suite. In which case, to Cobu
rg’s mind, they’d either been working with Joe Williams, and for some reason they’d fallen out and killed him; or they were rivals who happened to be in the same place at the same time. But why was Williams’ body found in the Count’s suite and not the King’s? Because the communists had learnt that the Count was away, and his suite was the base for them to get to the King’s suite. The same was true for Williams. It had to be an accidental meeting in Ahmed’s suite that had led to them killing Williams. If the communists had fallen out with Williams they’d have waited until the money had been removed before disposing of him, rather than kill him and abandon the robbery. He was just putting his thoughts down on paper, when the door opened and Lampson entered, accompanied by a short, frightened-looking young woman.

  ‘Anna Gershon, sir, Ollen’s girlfriend,’ Lampson introduced her. ‘I was just walking into reception when the desk sergeant called me over.’

  ‘I got your message, but I don’t like phones,’ said the girl. ‘So I came.’

  ‘Please, sit down,’ Coburg said to her, giving her a smile to put her at ease. ‘Rest assured you’re not in trouble. We just need your help with some enquiries.’

  ‘About Alex?’ And Coburg saw her lower lip tremble and tears come into her eyes.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ he asked. ‘Or coffee?’

  ‘I’d love a cup of coffee,’ she said. ‘I always used to drink tea before I met Alex, but he drank coffee. He used to bring it from the Ritz.’

  ‘I’ll have some sent up,’ said Coburg. ‘I doubt if it’ll be as good as what you’re used to, it’s Scotland Yard standard rather than the Ritz.’

  ‘It’ll be f-fine,’ she said.

  Her voice was shaky, and her nervousness was apparent in the way she twisted her hands together.

  ‘I’ll go and get the coffee,’ said Lampson. ‘How do you like it? Sugar? Milk?’