The Reckoning (37 page)

So what
was
her game? He still had no answer to his question.

He kept staring at the envelope. He was itching to know what was inside it. Finally he couldn't resist the temptation any longer and took out his penknife. It proved easier than he'd thought to slip the narrow blade beneath the blob of wax and free it from the paper; as for the cord, it presented no problem at all. In less than a minute he had the flap undone.

Lifting it, he drew out the only item it contained and held it up to the light.

‘Well, bugger me!'

It was a photograph of a young man in a private's uniform dating from the First World War. He was standing to attention, with a serious expression on his face. Nice-looking bloke too, Lenny thought.

Still, he couldn't pretend it wasn't a disappointment. He'd been hoping for something better – something juicy, incriminating even, or at least compromising: something that would bring the blood to Sir Percival's mottled cheeks. She was a young woman after all, and there was such a thing as blackmail.

But there was no point now in scratching his head. All he
could do was seal up the envelope and put it on the boss's desk along with the rest of the post. Blount's liner was due to dock at Southampton the following day and, unless he decided to take the rest of the week off, which was unlikely, knowing him, he'd be back in the office the day after that.

There was nothing Lenny could do now but wait and hope the mystery would be solved then.

29

‘A
H
,
THERE YOU ARE
, sir.'

Billy looked up from his desk in relief at the sight of the tall figure standing in the doorway.

‘Have they arrived yet?' Madden shed his coat and dumped his suitcase on the floor.

‘Ten minutes ago. I'm just looking at them now.'

The long-awaited list of names had finally arrived. Less than an hour before, Billy had received a call from the Royal Artillery depot at Woolwich informing him that the package was on its way over to him at the Yard, and he had rung Madden at once to tell him.

‘They're sending their service records as well, as you asked. A courier's bringing them.'

He had caught his old chief in the nick of time. With the work now completed in the house and Aunt Maud restored to her own room, Madden had been on the point of leaving to return home.

‘There's nothing more I can do now,' he had told Billy when they had spoken on the phone the day before. ‘I want to go home. Lucy will be back from Paris in a few days. I want to be there when she returns. And there's all the work at the farm I've been neglecting. I've been here long enough.'

Sensing that there was more to Madden's decision than he had revealed, Billy had said nothing. The release that day of Alma Ballard's name to the press, together with a photograph of the young woman obtained from the WAAF and dating from the time of her enlistment, had signalled the start of a critical phase in the investigation, one whose significance would not have escaped his former mentor. The hunt was nearing its end, and hitherto Billy had taken it for granted that Madden would want to delay his return home for a while at least, in the hope that he might see its conclusion.

He had been about to depart in a taxi when Billy had rung, and had agreed at once to call in at the Yard on his way to Waterloo so that he could cast his eye over the list.

‘We've got the names of all the officers who commanded batteries in the Arras region in the summer of 1917 before and after the court martial: there are twelve in total.' Billy indicated the papers spread out on his desk. ‘Three of them didn't make it through the war. It'd be a load off my mind if our chap was one of them, but that's probably too much to hope for. I've marked their names with a star. Here's the list.'

Madden took the single sheet of paper handed to him and scanned it.

‘Alden, Benson, Blount.' He began to recite the names. ‘Donald, Drake, Evans, Gregory, Palmer, Patterson, Roberts, Shepherd, Trimble.'

He shook his head.

‘I'm sorry, Billy. None of them rings a bell. I did meet an artillery officer called Patterson once, but that was months before, and he certainly wasn't the same man who presided at the court martial. Mind you, I'm only guessing that he was stationed in the Arras sector.'

‘Never mind, sir.' Billy managed to swallow his disappointment. ‘Have a look at their service records while I slip downstairs.
Charlie wants a word with me. He'll be glad to know you're here.'

‘How's Poole, by the way?' Madden drew the sheaf of papers towards him. ‘I saw that photograph of her in one of the papers yesterday, the
Mirror
, was it? It looked like a nasty bruise.'

‘Oh, she's all right.' Billy grinned. ‘Just angry. It was the headline:
Plucky policewoman collects a shiner.
She's not heard the end of it around here, I can tell you.'

‘Where is she?' Madden had found the office empty apart from Billy. ‘And where's Grace, come to that?'

‘I've got more men working for me now. It's all the calls that are coming in. There's no space for them here, so I moved the operation to the detectives' room.'

‘How is it going?'

‘Better not ask, sir.' Billy stood at the door. ‘You wouldn't believe how many times Alma Ballard's been “seen” since the chief super gave those two sketches and the photo to the papers. The phones never stop. She's got that kind of a face. She looks like a lot of women. Or they look like her.'

Lenny ran his eye over Blount's desktop. He straightened the blotter. It had been off-centre by a fraction. The pen-and-ink stand was where it ought to be, as was the new chrome-plated telephone that Sir Percival had had installed shortly before he had set sail for New York. Everything was in its place.

It had better be, too. As Lenny had learned by now, his employer liked to spray fear around him; fear and dismay. Although he hadn't shown up yet – it was ten o'clock, late for him, but then he might have slept in after the long drive up from Southampton yesterday, and the fog was still slowing the traffic – and his scowling presence hadn't yet made itself felt, you could sense the tension in the building. Staff had been a little
quicker to get to their desks; the typists who generally chattered like birds when they arrived for work had crossed the marble floor of the lobby with lowered heads and sealed lips.

Raikes had been jubilant.

‘Now we'll see,' he had said to Lenny, when he strolled into the lobby with a deliberately casual air, scanning the sporting pages of the
Daily Mail.
‘Now you'll find out what's what.'

‘Are you feeling all right, Raikesy?' Lenny had affected concern. ‘You seem a little off-colour.'

‘You'll get what's coming to you, Loomis. Mark my words.' Lenny had heard of people frothing at the mouth. Now he'd actually witnessed it. Raikes's spittle had carried over his desk as he spluttered, and Lenny had had to move smartly to get out of its way.

Also laid out neatly on Blount's desk now was the post that had arrived too late to be forwarded to New York. Lenny had opened the business letters as per instructions, and had left untouched anything that looked like personal mail. These last included the big envelope with the photograph inside, which he had closed up again, using Sir Percival's own stick of red sealing wax and the cord. It sat a little apart from the rest of the post, with the bold capitals PERSONAL and BY HAND catching the eye. He couldn't wait to see his employer's reaction when he opened it.

Who was the mysterious soldier pictured in the photograph?

Lenny had been racking his brains to come up with an answer. He'd reluctantly had to abandon the idea that it might be an illegitimate son of Blount's – one he didn't know about. Since the young man had obviously served in the First World War, he couldn't possibly have been fathered by Sir Percival, who wouldn't have been old enough. But that didn't mean there wasn't a mystery attached to it. Of that Lenny was sure. It was the sort of thing he had a nose for.

But however prescient his sixth sense was, it failed to alert
him to the bombshell that Raikes dropped on him a few minutes later.

The commissionaire had standing orders to ring Lenny upstairs the moment the chairman walked into the lobby, but Lenny was still sitting at his ease behind his desk going through the racing results, when the lift doors opened and Sir Percival stepped out. Larger than life, bulky in his overcoat, he strode across the floor, his heels echoing like rifle shots on the polished parquet.

‘I want a word with you, Loomis.'

Struck rigid by the sight of his employer, Lenny could only sit gaping as Blount's angry, inflamed visage hovered over him.

‘What's this I hear about you and some woman?'

‘Well, that went well.'

Charlie rubbed his hands with satisfaction.

‘Properly penitent, I'd say. Now if we can only get him trained up, he might stop interfering and allow us to get on with our jobs.'

Responding to the chief super's summons earlier on, Billy had discovered it wasn't to have a word with him, as he'd thought, but to accompany him to the assistant commissioner's office, in order to acquaint their superior with the striking progress that had been made in the investigation during his brief absence in Manchester.

‘It's good news, of course.' Charlie had been at his most unctuous. ‘We know who we're after now. But there is one problem. You'll have seen the name that we've given out to the press . . . Alma Ballard?'

‘Ballard? Yes? What about it?'

Eustace Cradock frowned. Not much to look at (or so Billy had always felt), the AC, Crime was on the short side, with thinning hair and specs that never seemed to sit straight on his
nose. He had been largely unnoticed during his days in the budgetary and traffic departments – the sort of chap you would nod to in the corridor and then try to remember exactly who he was. Added to which he had one feature that could only be described as unfortunate: a sharply pointed nose, the tip of which had a way of turning red in moments of stress. Looking at Cradock as he struggled to place the name – it was clear he'd forgotten it – Billy was put in mind of a mole that he had dug up in his garden last summer.

‘Well, she's got the same name as that soldier who was convicted and executed back in 1917 – the one I told you about.'

The chief super had paused at that point, his lugubrious face a picture of sympathy.

‘You mean . . . ?' The tip of Cradock's nose had begun to glow. The penny had dropped.

‘I'm afraid so, sir. Madden was right. It
is
all about the court martial. There's no doubt now. This woman is James Ballard's daughter.'

Chubb had allowed what seemed like a decent interval to pass in reflective silence. In reality he had been enjoying every moment of it.

‘Now I know you'll want to make sure that the appropriate quarters are made aware of this' – the chief super's delicate allusion to the shadowy Whitehall figures who had leaned on their AC had made Billy smile – ‘but what you can tell them is that it won't be made public straight away.'

‘I'm sorry, Chief Superintendent. I don't quite . . .'

‘We've given Miss Ballard's name to the papers, as I say, but that's all for now. We've made no mention of the court martial. However, it will all come out in the end – it'll have to – and it might be as well if those who feel this is a sensitive subject are made aware of that now. At least it will give them a breathing space, time to prepare their reaction. I'm sure you'd agree.'

Whether the AC did or not was never made clear, for Cradock
had remained wordless. He had simply swallowed and, taking this as an invitation to continue, Chubb had treated him to a brief summary of the facts relating to the investigation.

‘We've got police all over the capital looking for her, sir, and if she tries to leave the country we'll be waiting. I'd like to think that we'll arrest her soon, but it's only right to warn you there might be a problem with that. She is armed, as I've said, and there's some indication she might not give herself up. To be on the safe side I've issued a general order to all stations in the Metropolitan area that, in the event of her being cornered, she's not to be approached until armed officers are on the spot.'

Chubb had frowned.

‘However, there is one aspect of the case that continues to worry us. Logically there should be one more name on her list of victims – the most important one in fact, the one she would clearly hold to be most guilty. I mean the officer who presided over the court martial of her father. Up till now we've been unable to learn his name, and while the fact that he hasn't been killed may have a simple explanation, I won't rest easy, and neither will Mr Styles, until this young woman is no longer a threat to him – or anyone else.'

Finding his tongue at last, the AC had muttered some words of encouragement and with that the meeting had ended and they had returned to Charlie's office, where he was presently enjoying his triumph with rather more satisfaction than Billy thought seemly.

‘I'll have to leave you, sir,' he said. ‘I've got Mr Madden here. He's looking at those names.'

‘Wants to be in at the kill, does he?' Chubb rubbed his hands.

‘Oh no, I don't think so.'

Billy shook his head. He had had some time to reflect on their conversation the day before and thought he knew what was in his old chief's mind. Having done all he could to help with the police investigation, Madden feared his only reward
now would be to witness the unfolding of yet another tragedy thirty years after the first; and one he had been equally powerless to prevent.

‘He heard what that fellow Finch said: that we wouldn't take her alive. If that's what it comes to, he won't want to be there.'