Ring of Terror (23 page)

He looked across at Treschau who said, ‘Probably they will not be allowed to land. Possibly they may be returned here. Certainly an application to that effect will be made.’

Silistreau nodded agreement and said, ‘Now that you appreciate the position, let us move on to the next question.
Where are those papers now?’

‘I have told you what I did. It was not difficult to make Dmitry speak. It seems there had been a dispute between the two young detectives, Pagan and Narrabone.’

‘Pagan?’ said Silistreau with a mirthless smile. ‘I seem to run across that youth at every turn.’

‘On this occasion the attitude he adopted was helpful to us. When it was suggested that they used the keys and ransacked Jacob’s desk he said “No”. Responsible police officers do not commit burglary.’

‘So?’

‘Narrabone thought differently. Dmitry also. He handed over the keys, secretly.’

‘Then the actual robber was Narrabone.’

‘So Dmitry says.’

‘Was he telling the truth?’

‘By the time we had reached that point in his interrogation he was anxious only to speak the truth.’

Silistreau and Treschau looked at each other, weighing up the situation as it now appeared to them. This repeated interchange of glances was troubling Weil. He was not a clever man, but experience had made him sensitive to atmosphere. It seemed to him that he was being silently accused of having done something wrong.

Silistreau said, ‘Narrabone is not a Russian speaker?’

‘He may have picked up a few words, nothing more.’

‘And in view of the difference between these two young men, we may assume that Narrabone would not have handed the papers over to his colleague.’

Treschau said, ‘I agree. He’d have handed them to his superior. To Wensley and to no one else.’

‘So. There are really only two places where they may be. If not yet handed on, they will be in the lodging of these two men in Coolfin Road. If handed on, then most probably at Leman Street police station which is, as we know, where Wensley keeps his papers. The next question is, will he have had time to study them?’

Treschau said, ‘Very possibly, not yet. The Clapham Common case is close to its end. He will have been in court all day today and will be there tomorrow, when judgement is given.’

‘Then there is a chance of undoing’—a sharp look at Weil—’what has been done. Let us consider the steps to be taken. One of the instructions which we told you to give Katz was that his daughter should cultivate any acquaintance she had with members of the police force. Particularly those stationed at Leman Street and Poplar.’

‘Yes. Those instructions were passed on.’

‘And she has done what she was told to do?’

‘So far as Poplar was concerned no suitable opportunity has presented itself. But there was at Leman Street a Sergeant Gorman. In his case no cultivation was necessary. He was a friend from schooldays and had already indicated a more than general interest in her. She has encouraged him – tactfully.’

‘You mean that she has not allowed any intimacy.’

‘So her father says. In fact, he disapproves of the whole affair.’

‘To the extent of forbidding her to encourage the sergeant any further?’

‘No. When he understood the importance we placed on this fortunate chance, he agreed not to oppose the development of the affair.’

‘Understanding what would happen if he did so.’

‘Understanding it fully,’ said Weil with a smile. ‘And the matter has turned out even more fortunately than it had seemed originally. On promotion to sergeant, Gorman was placed on night duty. He shares it with another sergeant. They take alternate nights.’

‘When is he on next?’

‘Tomorrow night. Thursday.’

This answer seemed to please Silistreau. He smiled for the first time that evening and said to Treschau, ‘You remember we worked out the way this house could be approached with the minimum of exposure.’ Treschau nodded. ‘Since the instructions I have to give her are urgent, could I ask you to escort the girl here? I’m sure she’ll be happy with you.’

There it was again, thought Weil. Happier with Treschau than with him. Suspicion and distrust everywhere.

‘No time to lose,’ said Treschau. ‘I’ll go at once.’

‘One thing before I go,’ said Weil. ‘What am I going to do with Dmitry?’

‘Do what you like with him. The time for concealment and knuckling under is past. If the police want a showdown – which I doubt – they shall have it.’

Left to himself Silistreau added another lump of coal to the fire and settled himself back in his chair.

He combined, in unusual fashion, the attributes of a poet and a chess player. As a poet his imagination flowed freely, forwards and backwards, selecting words and notions and arranging them in sequence until they chimed harmoniously. As a chess player he schooled his imagination before it could get out of hand. In any given situation the characters involved could be set out on the board and their moves studied.

The basis of this particular game was secure. He was sure of that. The eldest Katz boy, Peter, was held in reasonable comfort in one of the honeycomb of cells under the Kremlin. He wrote, each week, a carefully considered letter to his father, thanking him for the money he sent and mentioning that, so far, no actual proceedings had been taken against him.

Other pieces had an unfortunate habit of behaving illogically: of flying off at a tangent; of moving when they should be standing still; of standing still when they should be moving. Dmitry had behaved with incredible stupidity. He deserved any punishment he received. There had been moments that evening when he had thought that he might have to upset the board and start again. At one point he had thought that it might be necessary to eliminate Weil, a step which he would have taken without the least hesitation had it been necessary. Fortunately it seemed that Dmitry had either not spoken the whole truth, or had not known it.

Either way, his time scheme was still operative. Just operative.

Thursday evening and Friday morning would be the crucial moments. All of his preliminary moves – the Lockett robbery and its sequel; the operations then taking place at Brownsong Court; the pathetic explosion at Bethnal Green (he smiled when he thought of that); right back to the attack on Carter Farnsworth in Newcastle (he had been lucky there) – all these were moves in the game he had been playing since his arrival in England.

There were risks, certainly, in adhering to his original timetable. He was ready to take steps to minimise those risks. One such step could be taken immediately.

He left the room and climbed the three flights of stairs which led to the room where Olaf lodged. Olaf had been useful to him on a number of occasions. He looked a lot younger than he really was, had curly hair and dressed like a sailor ashore. He was training himself to speak English and already had a good command of the language. Now Silistreau had instructions for him.

‘Better, I think,’ he concluded, ‘that you do it alone.’

‘No problem,’ said Olaf.

Silistreau could see a great future for Olaf.

He was not to know that he would rise, in the course of time, to a position of such power in Moscow that he was able to dispose of many of Silistreau’s closest friends.

Mr Justice Darling: Gentlemen, I would now ask you to retire to your room and consider and let me know when you have arrived at a conclusion.
[Two officers being sworn to take charge of the jury, they retired at 4 p.m. They returned into court at 4.35 p.m.]

The Deputy Clerk of the Court: Gentlemen, are you agreed upon your verdict?

The Foreman of the Jury: We are.

The Deputy Clerk: Do you find Steinie Morrison guilty or not guilty of the murder of Leon Beron?

The Foreman: We find the prisoner guilty.

The Deputy Clerk: Is that the verdict of you all?

The Foreman: That is the verdict of us all.

Mr Justice Darling: Steinie Morrison, you have been found guilty, after a long, careful and most patient investigation, of the crime of wilful murder. The jury have arrived at the conclusion that you did, either alone or with the help of another, kill that man Leon Beron. My one duty is to pass the judgement which the law awards. It is that you be taken thence to a place of lawful execution; that you be hanged by the neck until your body is dead and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.

The Prisoner: I decline such mercy. I do not believe there is a God in heaven either.

Wensley had waited for the verdict of the jury. As soon as the words were spoken, he slid out of his seat and was standing by the doorway as the judge finished speaking. This enabled him to get out ahead of the reporters who were rushing for the telephone.

He was making for the conference room at the back, which had been set aside for the use of the prosecution. Muir was a glutton for paper: the more he was offered, the more he devoured. The table was piled with documents, some loose, some strapped into bundles. Less than a quarter of them had been used in the proceedings.

Wensley sat down on one of the hard chairs, cleared room on the table for his elbows and rested his head on his hands.

Reaction was setting in.

It was not what the judge had said. Most of it was routine. It was what he had left out. He had not, as judges often did, expressed his belief in the correctness of the verdict.

His last words to the jury had been, ‘Gentlemen, if this case is proved, I know that you have fortitude enough to act upon your conscientious judgement and to say that this man is guilty. But’—and here a pause had seemed to add extra significance to his words—’if you are not satisfied, you know your duty and I am sure you will do it.’

A plain hint?

Was it possible they had made a mistake?

He was sure, in his own mind, that Morrison and an accomplice had bludgeoned Beron to death. What he was not sure about was whether the Crown had succeeded in proving it conclusively. The marks on the dead man’s cheeks had worried him. Were they casual slashes, or were they put there by the terrorists as a warning to anyone who might be tempted to betray them?

He had reached this point when there was a clatter of feet outside, a knock on the door and one of the court attendants put his head in and said, ‘There’s a gentleman—’

This was as far as he got before Macnaghten, who had followed him down the passage, burst in without ceremony.

Wensley could see that he was angry, but it was not one of those explosions of hot temper that could act as a safety valve. It was a cold fury; a public demonstration of his feelings, which Wensley had witnessed only two or three times before and which always meant trouble.

He said, speaking clearly for all his fury, ‘It is a declaration of war. I told you that the Katz boy, Dmitry, had disappeared yesterday.’ If he had done so, Wensley had been too wrapped up in the final stages of the trial to attend to him. ‘Well, he’s turned up. Naked. Hung by his heels from a tree in Victoria Park. With a notice round his neck. In English and in Russian. “Let Authority Beware.” Also he’d been flogged. With a raw-hide whip, a knout, something of that sort. His back was a mass of blood and bruises.’

‘Was that what killed him?’

‘No. The doctor said that particular damage was inflicted before death. Some time before.’

‘Do we know how he was killed?’

‘He’d been strangled. Manually. The marks of two hands round his neck were quite plain. It’s a piece of total and open defiance, seen by half a hundred people before the police got the body down. Not only seen, but photographed. It will be in all the papers.’

‘They won’t like it, sir.’

Wensley could think of no suitable comment. None was needed. Macnaghten was past discussion.

‘Do you think I like it? Any confidence people had in the police is being systematically destroyed. They’ll be wondering what they’re going to find next. Another old man with his head bashed in. Another boy hung up like a joint of meat in a butcher’s shop. Soon they’ll be scared to go out at night.’

Macnaghten was too angry to sit down. Now he swung on his heel and made for the door, saying, ‘Are you coming?’

‘Certainly,’ said Wensley mildly. ‘But I’d like to know exactly where we’re going.’

‘To the Home Office, of course. So that I can hand in my resignation personally.’

‘Right,’ said Wensley. ‘They might as well have mine at the same time.’

They left the court by the private door at the back, avoiding the crowd that was still milling round the main entrance, and reached Ludgate Hill where they found a cab. As it clattered off, they passed Luke on the pavement, but did not see him.

Luke had spent the day on a self-imposed task which he knew to be pointless. The more he realised this the more obstinately did he pursue it.

There were twelve names of printers and photographers on the list which Jacob had compiled for him and which had reached him just before midday. To these he had added a further six from his own researches. He was determined to visit them all. They had proved unlikely suspects, clearly incapable of carrying out the sort of forgery he had in mind. The suspicion with which he had started had long since hardened into certainty.

The guilty party must be Jacob Katz.

He was an accomplished photographer and an expert printer with up-to-date machinery. He was a binder, too. Some of his best pieces of work, which Anna had shown him with pride, were presentation folders with embossed covers. Lastly and conclusively he was, according to Dmitry, under the thumb of that creature Weil. So why waste a day looking further, when the truth was staring you in the face?

Because, said his inner monitor, you don’t want it to be Katz. Because, if Katz was at the heart of the affair, then Anna must be involved. Not as an outsider, not just running messages and doing occasional jobs, but a direct personal involvement. Had not Dmitry admitted that she would do whatever she was ordered to do? As a policeman surely he should welcome the chance of putting such a dangerous person away before she did any further damage.