Joint Enterprise (The Romney and Marsh Files Book 3) (7 page)

Romney made an exaggerated face of disgust, no doubt, thought Marsh, for Crawford’s benefit. ‘Is that the animal thing?’

‘Yes, Inspector. It’s the animal thing,’ said Crawford, his patience clearly wearing thin. Marsh hoped that the DI was not going to start on about it again. In any case, if he was thinking that way he was too slow. Crawford slammed his window of opportunity shut. ‘Possibly we’ll have to redo today’s shoot while everyone is still here. Christ what a mess. You said that the theft of those films is now a police matter, Inspector.’ A sly grin teased at the thin crease that was his mouth.
‘I hope you’ll be doing everything in your power to recover them. I know that my uncle, the chief constable, will be taking a great personal interest after I speak with him about today’s events.’ As a thinly veiled threat it was as counter-productive as it was crass.

Romney finally stood and as though he had been chatting amiably with an old friend sai
d, ‘Why are you shooting this the old-fashioned way, with film? I’d have thought everything was done digitally these days.’

Crawford’s features adopted a look of disdain. ‘Quite simply put, Inspector, film is the best quality option. Film is the thing I
am most comfortable with. Film gives the best results.’

‘G
ive my best to the chief constable when you see him.’

Marsh wasn’t surprised when they didn’t shake hands.

*

‘You hear him threatening me with old Crayfish senior, Sergeant?’ said Romney
, as they navigated their way through the dark and the obstacles.

‘I
s that what he was doing, sir?’

‘Don’t tell me your detective’s intuition missed it? Well he’d better hope that I don’t get my hands on his precious film before he does.’ He didn’t say why.

They were walking through the castle grounds heading back to the battlefield. They crossed through little pockets of eerie dark and quiet and Marsh felt the ghosts of centuries crowding in on her to make her feel strangely claustrophobic. She hurried her step to keep close to her DI.

‘So, what do you think?’ said Romney, oblivious to her reaction to the setting and the hour.

Marsh was grateful for the opportunity to use her voice and occupy her mind with something rational. ‘It’s almost certainly no coincidence the film was stolen the day a man is killed. According to independent and knowledgeable parties about both separate incidents, both rarer than hen’s teeth. It doesn’t take much seeing then that they must be related. It looks like the theft of the film has to be an inside job. You’d need to be in the know to know where the films were kept. You’d also need to be in the know and have access to the communication equipment to be able to call up and get that boy out of the way. All of which must mean that whoever was involved with the death and the violence – if those two factors are related – must have been involved in the filming in another way, or at least have had bloody good contacts in there. There’s only one reason someone would take the risk of attacking Ramsden and then taking all the film: fear of what it would reveal. But, what I don’t get is why people would take the field with the intention of visiting extreme violence on others, knowing full well there would be a good chance they were going to be caught on camera and then have to go through the highly risky business of stealing it. You suggested in there that maybe Crawford wanted proper violence, but if he did why then have the films disappeared? That’s not in his interests, is it?’

‘Perhaps
because the violence got out of control and someone died. That’s a bit different to a few scratches and bruises that could be played down, explained away as over-exuberance,’ said Romney.

Marsh said, ‘Given the assault and theft development, I think we’re probably wasting our time down there now. We know that everyone on both sides
has been accounted for. At least everyone who was on a list in the first place has been accounted for, and having spoken to a good number of them now, my gut feeling is that those responsible were never part of this group of people. I think we have to find those blokes from the car park, sir.’

‘While I try never to think with my gut, Sergeant, I
believe you’re probably right.’

***

4

Superintendent Falkner, uniform jacket fully buttoned up, stood centrally, stern-faced and erect at the large picture window of his top floor office, which provided a commanding view of Dover police station car park. Up until the barbed-wire-topped brick and stone wall that separated them from the outside world, he was Lord of all he surveyed. Romney spied him as he drove in, unable as he was since the super’s practice had become a habit, to keep himself from glancing up. He believed Falkner’s hands were clasped firmly behind his ramrod straight back. All that was missing was his hat and baton and maybe some Wagner.

Once again Romney speculated upon the station commander’s motives for this new early morning behaviou
r. Was it simply a method of exercising some personal need for a form of intimidatory control over his subordinates in the wake of ‘Wilkie-gate’? Like some eighteenth century ship’s captain on his poop deck while his pressed men scurried about beneath his authoritative presence, he was letting them know he was at his post, watching over them with his disciplined eye. Romney wondered if others had noticed him and if, like himself, they always felt his disapproval bearing down on them. Automatically, he guiltily checked the dashboard clock. He was not even close to being late.

Getting out of his vehicle and
after glancing around, Romney tucked his little cushion behind the driver’s seat. He locked up and began walking towards the car park exit and the small delicatessen a short walk away that served proper coffee. He resisted the urge to look up again and be forced into some form of mutual acknowledgement. He wasn’t going to be intimidated into abandoning his yearning for a cardboard cup of the real thing. It was his start to the working day.

He hadn’t gone far before he became aware of a strong tapping on glass. It wasn’t something he could reasonably ignore. He looked up to find his boss crooking his finger at
him and now he wasn’t a ship’s captain, but a stern-faced headmaster who had been looking out for a recalcitrant pupil.

Romney put on a cooperative face that he didn’t feel like assuming and changed direction as though it was absolu
tely no bother for him at all – a pleasure to be summoned up. He was careful to mutter his objections without moving his lips.

The door to Falkner’s office was wide open. He stood, still staring o
ut of the window. Although Falkner must have been aware of his approach – the outer office door had squeaked loudly on its dry hinges when he entered – Romney tapped lightly.

‘Come in, Tom.’

On his little trek up the stairs Romney had rooted around his conscience for something that he had done wrong, or perhaps not done at all, that would warrant his senior officer’s impatience to have a word with him. There was only one thing that he could think of – Hugo Crawford had carried out his threat of tittle-tattling to his uncle, the chief constable, and the old-boys’ network had been humming. Forcing himself to be optimistically affable Romney said, ‘Morning, sir.’

‘Take a seat.’

Romney had little choice but to accept the invitation, although it was going to cause him no little discomfort. The seats for visitors in the superintendent’s inner sanctum had recently been changed to a hard unyielding moulded plastic, like the ones in the canteen. Romney guessed it was an attempt by the man to dissuade visitors from, if not visiting, then at least staying long.

Falkner turned to face him, or rather look down on him. His lofty position had been restored and Romney was struck by the unkind notion that perhaps his
senior officer had been brushing up his boss skills from some self-help manual.

‘How did the incident at the castle end up last night?’

‘We are currently of the opinion that the death and the theft of the day’s filming are related. For one thing, the odds against this being the case are just too long for reasonable consideration and for another it makes sense that anyone who had been involved in the incident on the battlefield would then want to remove any and all evidence of that.’ Romney altered his position and grimaced.

Falkner noticed and said, ‘Everything all right?’

‘Yes, sir. A bit stiff, that’s all,’ lied Romney.

‘Any leads?’

‘We are as convinced as we can be that whoever bayoneted the Frenchman was not one of the hundreds of people officially involved in the re-enactment. DS Marsh and I encountered a small group of men in uniform of the period in the car-park soon after the battle scene. They don’t appear to have been part of the official proceedings. How they came to be on the set in the right gear is currently a mystery and our first priority to find out.’

Romney had
racked his brain the previous evening for the elusive memory of a familiar face that had been triggered when he and Marsh had run into the buoyant group soon after the battle scene had been shot. The fact that he had not been able to trawl it up irritated him beyond reasonable measure.

‘
About the theft of the film.’

‘Has to be an inside job, sir.’ Romney’s sixth sense told him that Falkner was building up to it.

‘I had a phone call from the chief constable rather late last night.’ And here it was.

‘Really, sir?’ Romney decided to play it dumb. Let Falkner do the work.

‘I gather you had cross words with his nephew, the director of the film.’

‘I woul
dn’t call it that, sir. A difference of artistic opinion perhaps, but it was all in good spirit, as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Not as far as he is, it would seem.’

‘You know what these artistic types can be like, sir – a bit touchy about their ‘art’ sometimes.’

Falkner made a noise in the back of his throat. ‘Well, now the CC is going to be taking a personal interest in proceedings, so I would advise that in future dealings with the nephew, if you must have them, you keep your thoughts about his work to yourself and concern yourself solely with policing. Make myself clear?’

Romney nodded and forced a thin smile, not trusting himself to open his mouth. That little shit Crawford minor was going to rue the day he blabbed to uncle, told tales and flexed his influence.

‘Unfortunately, the station’s reputation has not yet recovered from the disgrace that
Detective Sergeant Wilkie brought on us all and I, for one, don’t want us to be courting further trouble or attention. We’re still under area’s spotlight. We’ve got to be perfect, Tom: thorough, effective, fair, cooperative and above all everything by the book. It’s called modern policing, Tom, and we simply must embrace it. Resistance, as they say, is futile.’ Perhaps thinking he’d overdone his admonishment, he tried a smile. It looked horribly false and forced. ‘It’s no longer simply about results.’ And now he had allowed a hint of nostalgic melancholy for the old days and the old ways to cloud his features and his tone. ‘Actually,’ he said, sitting down and looking almost as though he were a little tired of his charade, ‘it’s been like that for a good while now, generally, and we’ve got to catch up, or perish in the culls. It’s all about accountability for this and accountability for that. I read somewhere, a little while ago, that accountants were responsible for ruining everything. I wonder sometimes if that were not just an unfortunate typographical error and it should have read ‘accountability’. But whether we like it or not, it’s here to stay, so we’d better get used to it, even if we can’t yet force ourselves to embrace it with love.’

*

Romney entered the offices of CID with Falkner’s unsettling little pep-talk and associated reverie still troubling him. They were all present and correct, he noticed. And three of them had disposable coffee cups advertising the establishment he had intended to visit. He recollected with a pang of annoyance that he had been denied his liquid breakfast. It was something else to hold against Crawford minor. But he could hardly nip out now with them all mooning up at him for his lead.

‘What are we doing about tracing those blokes from the car park?’ he said to Marsh. She sported a little moustache of white froth from her Cappuccino and Romney found himself perversely drawn to focus on it.

‘As soon as anyone is open, sir, I’m going to start ringing around businesses that hire out that sort of outfit. I’ve made a list of possibles.’

‘How many?’

‘Two.’

‘In Kent?’

‘In the country, sir. It’s a specialised niche market. Not too much fancy-dress call for British uniforms of the Napoleonic wars. Any luck with your memory about that face from the car park?’

The question, asked as it was in a kindly sympathetic manner, made him feel old and he didn’t like it. ‘No, but it’ll come. Just not when I’m searching for it.’

Grimes was blowing noisily on his latte.

‘Did you manage to speak with the historian in charge of choreographing the battle, yet?’ said Romney to him.