Petrella at 'Q' (11 page)

Petrella said, “That sounds quite a good arrangement.” It had the feel of a nice little gold smuggling racket. As soon as they got some more information they could act on it. Meanwhile other more urgent matters occupied his time.

It was on a dark day at the beginning of December, a day of drizzle which could turn later into fog, that a further instalment of Mr. Mayflower’s letter-writing arrived on Petrella’s desk. On this occasion, he had abandoned the police and turned the searchlight of his attention onto the Immigration Service. It seemed that they were being very slow in answering enquiries from anxious relatives in India and Pakistan.

Did his readers know that there were cases where men had come to England and their families had not heard from them for eighteen months or even two years?

As he read it, a very faint prickle of alarm stirred in Petrella’s mind. It was an instinctive reaction, born of experience, sharpened by the habit of joining together apparently unassociated scraps of information, which is the basis of all good police work. Somewhere, months before, he had read a report – from where, and about what? He could see himself sitting back in his chair and reading it. The hot tarry diesel-fumed smell of Patton Street had been coming in through the wide-open window. So it must have been July or August. He had thought the report worth keeping and he had filed it. Interpol. That was right. It was a routine report from Interpol.

Petrella unearthed it, and read it a second time, with the murk of December swirling down Patton Street and the sounds of life coming muffled through the tight-shut window.

A French revenue cutter, patrolling in the early morning mist, had hit a small outboard motor boat which was running without lights. By the time the cutter had succeeded in turning round and getting back to the scene of the collision, the boat had sunk, but the crew of two, who were wearing life-jackets, had been rescued without much trouble. They turned out to be local fishermen. They had offered no satisfactory explanation of what they were doing, and the look-out on the cutter asserted that, just before the crash, he had seen a third man in the small craft. The two fishermen had been released after questioning as there seemed to be nothing specific they could be charged with. A fortnight later a body was recovered. It had been swept by the current into the rocks at the foot of the Nez de Joburg and wedged there. It appeared to be an Indian, in early middle age, dressed in what had, before its immersion, been a respectable suit of clothes. Under the coat, in a webbing belt worn round the waist, were twelve four-ounce tablets of gold.

Petrella sent for Sergeant Roughead and was irritated to find that he was out on an enquiry. He spent some time after that on the telephone to the managing director of Waterside Properties.

It was four o’clock, and the drizzle of the morning had turned into a thick mist, when Milo arrived back. Petrella said, “There’s been a development in the gold-running business. Do you think you could get on to your pal down at Cooling and see if he’s got anything to report.”

“I’ve had three reports from him already,” said Milo smugly.

“You’ve had
what?”

“Three reports. The last one was two days ago. I don’t suppose—”

Petrella said, “Are you trying to tell me that you’ve had three reports and sat on them?”

“They weren’t very conclusive—”

“Do you want to continue in the police force?” The anger in his voice was so sharp that Milo went scarlet. He found nothing to say. “There is one use and one use only for information. You share it. You don’t hoard it. Or decide what’s important and what isn’t. Or wait till you’ve got everything complete and wrapped up so that you can spring it on us as a nice surprise. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Roughead, in a very small voice.

“Then let’s have it.”

“The doctor has been seen down there three times. Twice he came by car and once by train to Graystone Halt, and was picked up by his wife. She’d come down earlier by car. She didn’t meet him at the station actually. She waited a short distance away and he walked to the car. They’ve got an old farm house on the marshes. It’s down a track, leading off the main road.”

“Don’t explain it. Just show me.”

Petrella had a one-inch Ordnance Survey map spread on his desk and Sergeant Roughead put his finger on a dotted line, which led out over the marshes and stopped just short of the river. A building was marked at the end of it.

“It’s called Barrows Piece,” said Sergeant Roughead. He seemed to have recovered some of his spirits. “A farmer called Barrow built it, and committed suicide in the barn. It’s pretty lonely. The Lovibonds seem to use it as a weekend cottage.”

Petrella had picked up the telephone and dialled a number. Before he could speak, a recorded voice at the other end said, “Doctor Lovibond will not be available until Monday morning. If you have a message would you speak it slowly, beginning now.”

Petrella replaced the receiver and looked out of the window. The mist was thickening into fog. He said, “Tell Anderson I shall want his car, with him driving it. He’d better have a set of chains with him. I shan’t be starting before ten o’clock.”

Milo said, “Right sir, Anderson plus car chains at twenty-two hundred hours.” He looked like a dog who is not certain if he is going to be taken for a walk or not.

“All right,” said Petrella. “You too.”

As the car crept through the fog Petrella said, “The main outline’s clear enough. Dr. Lovibond had a medical practice in Pakistan. A lot of wealthy clients and a lot of contacts. He was just the man to run this end of a high-class illegal immigration service. When a rich Pakistani is taken on – one at a time probably – he’s told to bring most of his portable wealth with him in gold. He comes overland to the north coast of France and is run out by the fishermen to a small cargo boat, which times its run to arrive off Tilbury in the early hours of the morning. At some point before they reach Tilbury, the passenger is put ashore near Barrows Piece. The pay-off is in gold. We’ve found out that the doctor has a small workshop on that Waterside Properties lot. That’s where he turns the gold into different saleable objects. Then his wife disposes of them for him. We’ve traced three of her outlets besides Blooms Antiques. When we get down to it we shall probably find a lot more.”

“What did he do with the Pakistanis after he got them to Barrows Piece,” said Sergeant Roughead.

Petrella said to the driver, “You fork left here, Andy. Just before you get to the bridge.” And to Sergeant Roughead, “That’s what we may be going to find out. The doctor’s down there and a fog like this is just the job for them.”

It was past midnight when they reached the track, and drove slowly up it, chains churning the mud. It twisted and turned, between high hedges of thorn, going downhill all the time. Then they were out in the open, with nothing ahead of them but a wall of white mist.

“It can’t be too far now,” said Sergeant Roughead who had a torch on the map and his nose down over it.

“All right. We’ll leave the car here,” said Petrella. “See if you can turn it without getting bogged, Andy. You come with me, Sergeant.”

A hundred yards, and the house loomed ahead of them. At first they thought it was deserted, but as they came nearer, they could see that there was a chink of light in one of the downstairs windows. Petrella touched Sergeant Roughead on the arm and went forward alone. His feet grated on a gravel path and he stood very still. But the window ahead was tightly shut and now he could hear, through it, the sound of music.

He crept forward again, treading through a flowerbed, and peered through the gap in the curtains at a scene of innocent domesticity. Doctor Lovibond was sitting in one wicker chair in front of the fire, smoking a cheroot and reading a newspaper. His wife, in the other chair, was sewing. The portable wireless set on the table stopped giving out music and a voice made an announcement. The doctor lumbered to his feet and left the room. Petrella heard a door opening on the far side of the house. He wondered exactly what he was going to say if the doctor came round with a torch and found him kneeling in his rose-bed.

After a few minutes the doctor came back again. Whatever he was waiting for, it had been a false alarm. Petrella crept back to Sergeant Roughead. He said, “They wouldn’t be sitting about at one o’clock on a winter morning for fun. They’re waiting for something all right. We’ll get back to the car and wait there. It’s got a heater.”

Sergeant Roughead said, “G-g-good.”

It was nearly four o’clock when they heard it. The moan of a foghorn and the thump-thump of a diesel engine. A small, single-screw boat, Petrella guessed, coming up slowly against the stream. They climbed out of the car. During the time they had been sitting there, a light wind had got up and was starting to roll away the fog.

When Petrella reached the window he saw that Mrs. Lovibond was alone. She had her back to him and was doing something with a bottle and glasses at the sideboard. The beat of the engine was quickening again as the boat picked up speed. The woman half turned her head to listen, and Petrella saw her face for the first time. Piled grey hair, a beak of a nose, a deep cleft down each side of an unsmiling mouth, a strong firm chin. It was a face that had built empires. A face that had ruled a thousand Indian servants. The face of a pukka mem-sahib. The back door banged and Dr. Lovibond came in, carrying a heavy portmanteau in one hand, his other hand on the arm of a tall, thin Indian, enveloped in a greatcoat, the astrakhan collar turned up to his ears, a woollen cap pulled down over his head.

The doctor prodded the fire into a blaze, whilst his wife helped the newcomer to take off coat and cap and sat him down in one of the chairs in front of the fire. Doctor Lovibond produced some dry socks and a pair of slippers which the man put on. Mrs. Lovibond had gone across to the sideboard, where three glasses stood ready. She selected one of them carefully, brought it back, and handed it to their guest. The smile which she switched on as she did so raised her lips away from her teeth.

Petrella put one shoulder to the flimsy casement, which broke inwards with a splintering of wood and glass. As he got one knee on to the sill to climb through, he said, “I don’t think I should drink that.”

The first to move was the woman. She put down the glass on the table, took a quick step back to the sideboard, snatched up one of the bottles standing there, and aimed a blow at Petrella’s head. Petrella ducked. The bottle missed his head, flew out of her hand and hit the wall just beside Sergeant Roughead who was climbing through the window. Petrella got his arms round the woman, who was screaming at the top of her voice. They rolled on to the floor together. The two men had hardly moved. The newcomer seemed paralysed with shock. The doctor looked, without any expression on his face at all, at his wife, rolling on the floor, at Sergeant Roughead, at the police driver who was climbing through the shattered window. Then, before they guessed what he was going to do, he picked up the glass on the table and swallowed the contents. As his body jack-knifed forwards on to the floor, the woman started howling.

“Strychnine,” said the police doctor. “I suppose the whisky would have disguised the taste long enough for the visitor to have got some of it down. One mouthful would have finished him. Your face could do with a bit of patching.”

It was nine o’clock and the sun was shining over a landscape which had turned white with frost. Petrella said, “It was her nails.”

They had taken away Nora Lovibond, strapped to a stretcher. Through the gap in the window Petrella saw the Chief Constable and went out to have a word with him.

He said, “We’ve found the place. It’s just behind the barn. They’re opening it up now.”

The digging was being done by a constable and Sergeant Roughead. They were uncovering a pit. A dapper figure, in a neat fawn coat, watching the operation, was Dr. Summerson, the Home Office Pathologist. He said, “Careful now. It would be better to take the last earth away with your hands.” He looked doubtfully at Milo whose face was grey. “That is, if you don’t mind. Perhaps I’d better get my coat off and give you a hand.”

“That’s all right,” said Milo. He got down into the pit and started to scrape away the last of the earth.

There were six bodies, each wrapped in a coat, seeming to huddle together in their earthen bed as if to make room for more.

“Peace with Honour,” said Milo. He climbed out of the pit, turned away and was sick.

The Grants lived in Kennington. Mr. Grant worked in an architects’ office in the City and had inherited the small terrace house in Dodman Street. It was convenient, since he could reach the Bank Station in ten minutes on the Underground. But it was not a neighbourhood which he found really congenial. There was Mr. Knowlson, who worked in insurance and lived two doors up. But most of the inhabitants of Dodman Street were uncouth men, with jobs at one or other of the railway depots, who went to work at five o’clock in the morning and spent their evenings in public houses.

Mr. Grant had often spoken to his wife of moving out to the suburbs, where people went to their offices at a rational hour and spent the evenings in their gardens and joined tennis clubs and formed discussion groups. The factor which tipped the balance against moving was Timothy. Timothy was their only child and was now fourteen, but with his pink and white face and shy smile, he could have been taken for twelve. After a difficult start, he was happily settled at the Matthew Holder School near the Oval, and sang first treble in the choir of St. Marks.

“It would be a pity to make a change now,” said Mrs. Grant. “Timothy’s easily upset. I’ve put his dinner in the oven, I hope he won’t be too late back from choir practice. If his dinner gets dried up, he can’t digest it properly.”

At that moment Timothy was walking very slowly down the road outside St. Marks. He was walking very slowly because, if the truth be told, he had no great desire to get home. When he did get there, his mother would make him take off his shoes and put on a dry pair of socks and would sit him down to eat a large and wholesome meal, which he did not really want, and he would have to tell his father exactly what he had done in school that day and—