XPD (30 page)

Chapter 27

The duty London field controller phoned Boyd Stuart at 1423 hours on Friday, 20 July. He was on an internal scrambler line so he could speak freely. ‘Stein went there,’ said the duty controller.

‘And where is he now?’

‘He went back to the hotel. He was as white as a sheet. He walked the streets as though he didn’t know where he was going. Then he saw a taxi cruising past, hailed him and arrived back at his hotel about forty minutes ago. He’s shaken.’

‘So would I be,’ said Stuart. ‘Still no sign of the police there?’

‘The German lad told his bank that he wanted a few days off. They probably won’t even report him missing until Monday. The other boy has no close friends or relatives so far as I have discovered.’

‘How long was Stein inside?’

‘Twenty minutes, maybe less.’

There was a long silence during which Boyd Stuart drew a series of boxes on his blotting pad. Then he carefully drew crosses inside each square until the design was complete. ‘Are you there?’ said the duty controller.

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘This would be the time to do it, sir. Our man tailing him said Stein seemed to be in a terrible state.’

‘Thanks,’ said Stuart. ‘Keep me in touch.’

He hung up the phone and reached for his hat. Like Billy Stein, he decided that the weather was not good enough for him to go without his raincoat.

‘I’m calling on Mr Stein,’ Boyd Stuart told the hotel receptionist. ‘I want to surprise him.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but …’

Boyd Stuart’s hand reached out and grabbed the wrist of the man at the desk before it got near to the house-phone. ‘I want to surprise him,’ said Stuart again, this time flipping open the Metropolitan Police warrant card he kept for such occasions.

The clerk stared at the identification. ‘I’ll have to get the manager.’

‘Get no one,’ said Boyd Stuart, ‘or I’ll have you inside on a charge of obstructing a police officer in the execution of his duty.’ He was speaking very quietly but he held on to the man’s wrist with enough force to make him wince with pain. ‘I’m just going upstairs for a nice quiet chat. You understand?’

‘I understand,’ said the man. Boyd Stuart released his grip and walked quickly across to catch the doors of the lift. By the time the reception clerk looked up from rubbing his wrist, Stuart had gone.

Room 301 was next to the lifts. Such 01 rooms were always next to the lifts, and experienced travellers tried to avoid them. Stuart wondered why Stein didn’t have a suite. According to the results of the check they had run on the family’s credit and level of spending, it would be well within his means. Stuart switched off the light in the corridor and then knocked at the door.

‘Yes.’ It was Billy Stein’s voice.

‘Room service.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve got a packet for you – from somewhere abroad. It’s got foreign postage.’

‘Put it under the door.’

Stuart smiled. He remembered being caught out like that before. ‘It’s a packet, I said. It won’t go under the door.’ There was another long silence and then Stuart heard the lock being turned. He knew he would have to be fast, and hoped fervently that Stein didn’t put the chain on the catch.

Billy Stein opened the door a fraction and Stuart lowered his shoulder and charged it with all his weight. Stein was prepared, but not prepared enough. He went reeling back into the room; Stuart followed, stumbling over Stein’s baggage, and saving himself from falling only by steadying himself on the bed end. By that time Stein was sitting on the floor and Stuart was facing him with a Smith & Wesson Magnum held twelve inches from his nose.

‘Freeze,’ said Stuart and the young man froze. It was not the first time Stuart had selected from the armoury this big gun that only just fitted into his shoulder holster and weighted him to one side. But he had seen the way its
.357
Magnum bullets could go through the metal of car bodies, and he had also seen the way the sight of it stopped men in their tracks, as now it froze Billy Stein sprawled on the bedroom floor.

‘There’s no cash here,’ said Billy Stein, still looking at the huge pistol. ‘No camera, no traveller’s cheques.’ He managed a touch of derision. ‘You dialled the wrong number, buddy. I’m down to my last few bucks and looking for a job.’

Stuart smiled, ‘You disappoint me, Billy.’

Stein looked up and scowled. ‘How the hell did you get my name?’

Stuart did not reply. He looked round the room. Stein was wearing a dressing gown and had been on the bed trying to sleep. His gold wristwatch was on the side table together with
Geographia’s London Atlas
and his yellow-tinted spectacles.

‘Next time you answer a knock at the door in a hotel room, put your glasses on. You might have to sign something.’

‘Next time, punk?’ said Billy Stein. He was recovering from his surprise enough to show anger. ‘Next time I’ll take you to pieces with my bare hands.’ Stein tried to get to his feet.

‘Stay right where you are,’ said Stuart. ‘I know how to use this shooter, and I’ll give you what you gave those poor kids up in King’s Cross this morning if you provide the slightest excuse.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Billy. ‘Wait a minute. What kids? What are you babbling about?’

‘Don’t give me all that stuff, Stein. I know what you did this morning before returning to your nice hotel for a doze. You killed those two kids and hacked their heads off. What did they do to you? Were you trying to sell them some of your dad’s fancy Hitler documents, or were they behind with the rent?’

‘Oh, now I get it,’ said Billy Stein. ‘You’re one of the Brits talking to my dad about his papers. You know all about that stuff.’

‘I know about the papers,’ said Stuart. ‘What I didn’t know is the lengths that you and your dad would go to hang on to them. What did you use, Billy? A hacksaw, was it, or a chopper?’

‘You don’t talk to me like that, you bastard,’ said Billy. ‘I didn’t kill those people – kids you say they were; I don’t know if they were kids or what – I was set up …’

‘Set up? Set up how, and by whom? You fly into London – first class with all the trimmings – and check into this flashy hotel. You leave here this morning and go directly to an address in King’s Cross – not a regular call on the average tourist itinerary, you’ll agree – and stay inside about twenty minutes. Is that about the time you were required to do the deed, Stein? Set up? What in hell are you talking about?’

‘This is your territory. I’m out of place here; I’m vulnerable. OK. But I didn’t kill those people up there in that stinking little place. I swear to God, I didn’t.’

‘So who did kill them, you little creep?’ Stein moved. ‘Keep still, or I’ll blow your head off.’

Stein laboriously described his father’s arrest by the highway patrol, and the phone call from Paul Bock which was waiting for him when eventually he returned to his home in Cresta Ridge Drive. Stuart knew that the slow recital of events was calculated to provide Stein with a chance to collect his wits and talk his way out of his predicament, but he did nothing to hurry him or interrupt. He just waited until Stein ran out of steam and when Stein looked up at him for his reaction, Stuart was standing, gun in hand, smiling politely.

‘What’s so funny?’ said Stein.

‘Am I getting this right?’ said Stuart. ‘You’re telling me that a man phoned your father in Los Angeles, a man you’ve never heard of before, and on the strength of one phone call you leapt aboard a plane and came to London? Pull the other leg, Stein, it’s got bells on.’

‘He said it was about the documents.’

‘Oh, he said it was about the documents,’ said Stuart mockingly. ‘Well, that explains everything. Naturally if someone phones up and says …’

‘The hell with you,’ said Stein. Now he had heard Stuart deride his explanation, he realized how improbable it would sound to the jury.

‘Shall I tell you what they do with people who go into the homes of law-abiding inhabitants of north London and hack their heads and hands off? They put them into the lock-up for altogether too long. Did you ever see an English prison, Stein? Or, more pertinently, did you ever smell one? Did you ever smell one first thing in the morning, when they are slopping out? No flushing toilets there, my friend. You won’t be sitting in the lounge watching colour TV, like they do in those nice California state prisons. We’re more primitive over here. This morning’s headlines make it seem you’ll beat the hangman, Billy. But you’ll spend the rest of your natural life in some dirty, smelly, old Victorian slum that looks like an illustration to a Charles Dickens novel.’

Billy Stein hammered a fist against the carpet. ‘I didn’t kill anyone.’

‘What did they do? Steal some of your Nazi documents? I noticed that the shop was filled with Nazi swords and daggers and that kind of junk. Is that what they did?’

‘If you are going to book me, book me.’

Stuart stepped over to the dressing table and fingered quickly through Stein’s US passport, airline tickets, keys and coins, and a wallet containing paper money, California driving licence, social security card and credit cards. ‘Ask yourself what kind of position you’re in,’ Stuart suggested.

Billy said nothing.

‘You’ve left your dabs all over that house in King’s Cross. The police still take fingerprints, Stein. I know that these whizz kids in the private-eye movies say it’s all out of date, but the cops get a lot of convictions every year on fingerprint evidence.’ Stuart lifted a Samsonite two-suiter on to the bed. ‘Fingerprints are computerized nowadays, Stein. No more time wasted while some civilian clerk compares arches, loops and whorls – all done in a flash nowadays.’ He opened the catches and rummaged quickly through the clothes inside. ‘And even if you are innocent, who’s going to believe it?’

‘You won’t find the Hitler documents in there, buddy.’

‘Won’t I? Well, that’s too bad, but I get an A for effort, right?’ Stuart waved the pistol at him. ‘Keep still until I tell you to move.’

‘Do you know what I really think? I think
you
killed those two people. Or, if you didn’t do it personally, someone employed by the goddamned British spy service did it. Then you put that phone message on my tape and staked out the house to watch me walk into your trap. It’s a frame-up, as sure as I ever saw one. And one day I’ll get even with you, if it takes me a million years.’

‘Never mind the histrionics,’ said Stuart. ‘You lean forward and put your hands behind you so that I can fit the handcuffs on you. Try to grab my gun and I’ll have to hit you over the head with the butt of it – you understand?’

‘OK,’ said Billy. ‘You’re charging me, are you?’

‘Like in the Hitchcock films, you mean?’ He got one cuff on to Stein’s wrist and struggled with the other until it finally clicked. It pinched Billy’s skin and he gave a grunt of pain. ‘No, you’ll be charged by a nice police inspector, in full dress uniform. You get an inspector for a murder charge, Stein, no lesser rank may do it. It will be something to write to your dad about. I just came along to collect you. We’re going out the back way. Cut up rough and you’ll go out feet first. Got it?’

‘Yep.’

Stuart had arranged everything with great care. He used two young probationary trainees from the Foreign Office to help him with the car and pacify the hotel staff. They hustled Stein out through the baggage door, and put him into a black Rover saloon which had been passed off more than once as a police vehicle.

They put Billy Stein into a safe house in Pentonville Road. A man named Benson, dressed up as a police inspector, went through all the formalities with Stein, and certainly the cells in the basement were convincing enough. They had been built in May 1945 to hold high-ranking Nazis brought to London for interrogation. Since then they had been used to store stationery, except when charades like this one necessitated moving all the boxes of paper upstairs.

‘It went all right,’ said one of the trainees. It was exactly the sort of task they had looked forward to when first selected for assignment to MI6.

‘Let’s wait until we’re sure that no one took the licence number of that Rover and finds it’s registered in the name of old Tom Morris in the accounting department. Did you put the fear of God into the hotel staff? We don’t want anyone phoning the
Evening Standard
news desk.’

‘I did just what you told me, sir,’ said one trainee obsequiously.

‘You’ll go a long way, Parsons,’ said Stuart. ‘Paid his bill, and checked his room carefully?’

‘Just the way they showed us to do it at the training school.’

Stuart pulled a face. ‘No one’s perfect,’ he said. ‘I’m going home now. You can give him some gentle interrogation for the next two hours. I’ll take over when I return.’

‘What is the prime objective?’ asked the first trainee.

Stuart recognized the terminology. They had been talking about primary and secondary interrogation objectives decades ago when he had first passed through the school. ‘Just ask him questions,’ said Stuart. ‘Any questions. Don’t try to solve the murders – just keep him awake for me. I want him tired and worried by the time I take over.’

‘Are we certain that he didn’t murder the people in King’s Cross?’

Stuart looked at him. Only these young trainees asked that sort of direct question, but he let it go without complaint. ‘The two men were discovered dead by one of our own operatives while Billy Stein was still in the USA.’

‘I suppose that clinches it,’ said the trainee.

‘Let’s just say that we’d need a very persuasive prosecutor,’ said Stuart and went home.

Chapter 28

The top two floors of the Pentonville safe house, in a shabby part of north London, were converted into a separate apartment. Meetings were sometimes held there, although these were never the high-level ‘policy meetings’, or the monthly so-called ‘soviets’, or even the finance meetings. All those were held in more luxurious environments: the house that overlooked the Thames at Marlow or the equally fine manor house at Abingdon. Places where, or so it was always insisted, the extensive parkland provided better security.