Man of Blood, page 12
“But I’ve been out of the country,” Haasden protested. “How could I possibly be involved?”
“You left the country pretty smartly after I’d been shot. Tell me…”
“Yes?”
“Is your name pronounced as in ‘ass’ or ‘arse’?”
“As in ‘hazard’,” was the tight-lipped reply.
*
“What does Lee Haasden do for a living?” Piers asked.
Thea glanced up from pouring coffee. “I’m not sure. He was a bit cagey about it. He always had plenty of money though.” They were in Thea’s office at the Kensington nanny agency. Piers had gone straight there after leaving Haasden’s apartment.
“Didn’t that bother you at all?”
“Not really. I suppose I thought he might be involved in something like sanctions busting in the arms trade. To be honest I didn’t give it a lot of thought.”
“But what gave you that idea?”
“Piers, I don’t know,” she replied, irritated. “I suppose when he mentioned the gun club and the fact that he didn’t really want to tell me what he did I put two and two together. You don’t always question people closely. It looks as though you don’t trust them.”
“But, arms?”
“Nothing illegal, silly. I wasn’t even sure if we had any trade sanctions with South Africa. I was thinking of things along the lines of sporting rifles and so forth. Not munitions. Why do you want to know?”
“I’ve just been talking to him.”
“How was he?” she enquired eagerly. Piers took a mouthful of coffee, regarding her over the rim of his cup.
“You’re a pig,” Thea said with feeling.
“I didn’t realize that you still liked him.”
“So I’m interested in how he’s keeping,” she said in offhand fashion.
“How many times did you take him home?”
“I resent this inquisition,” she retorted.
“It’s important.”
“All right. On several occasions,” she said defiantly. “There was a time when we were going to be married.”
“Look, I want you to think carefully. Do you think he could know that Mother was left that jewellery?”
“Grandmother’s jewellery?”
“Yes.”
“It’s possible, I suppose. Yes, I remember now. She was wearing a sapphire and diamond brooch one evening that had been Grandma’s and I said how it suited the dress she had on. I’m sure Lee was there.”
“And was he ever there when Crispin Blake was too?”
“Oh, yes. That’s easy. Last Christmas. At the big party we have on Boxing Day.”
“And you broke up with Haasden soon afterwards?”
Thea nodded slowly. “I can’t imagine why you’re asking me these questions.”
“Mother’s being blackmailed.”
“Is that why she wanted you at home?” she gasped.
“Yes.”
“But — ”
“Someone has found out she had an affair with Blake.”
This rendered Thea speechless for a moment. Then she said, “Well, I knew he meant something to her but imagined it was all in the past. Oh God, how awful for her.”
“She’s given whoever it is the jewellery.”
“And she told you all this without your having to put pressure on her?”
“Of course. She wants me to sort it out for her. So does Dad.”
“Mummy rang last night and said that Colin Morgan had been found dead. Is his death something to do with it?”
“Only if my being shot is connected too.”
“And you suspect Lee?”
“It’s just a line of enquiry. If you chucked him, and he had guessed about Mother and Blake and also knew she had the jeweller…”
“I still don’t see what this has to do with your being shot.”
“The blackmail notes made threats of other deaths following Grandmother’s — as well as making the affair public knowledge. So it’s fairly immaterial whether the blackmailer thought it was you or me in the lodge.”
“What would you say if I told you that I thought I was being followed?”
“I’d treat the statement with great seriousness.”
“I’m not sure, but they — ”
“They?”
“Two men. I have a feeling there are two. They might even hang around all day in the street. If you come to the window I’ll show you what I mean.”
Thea parted the vertical blind a little. “There. See that man leaning on the wall reading a paper? I’m convinced he followed me here from home this morning. Sometimes another man’s with him.”
“And they follow you home at night?”
“I think so. But everywhere is so crowded, of course.”
Piers sat down again. “It’s all right, I know them. The one reading the paper’s called Tony.”
This enraged her. “Part of your little criminal empire?”
“No. As a matter of fact they both work for Special Branch. I met Tony when he and I — ”
“I’m sure you bloody well did!” Thea shouted. She rarely shouted like this. “Well, you can call them off. If you don’t, I’ll go down there and have a go at them with a knife or something. How dare you!”
“You’re too upset to think straight,” Piers told her. “They’re there to protect you in case this person tries again. Besides, do you imagine I’m in a position to tell the police what to do?”
He had obtained permission from Rolt to tell her the truth if it became absolutely necessary and had been about to do so before she interrupted him.
“They’re policemen,” he went on gently. “Another two watch your flat at night.”
“How do you know this, Piers?”
“Commander Rolt told me.”
“Oh.” She went pink with embarrassment. “Oh.” After another silence she said, “Silly of me. Sorry I shouted at you.”
He held out his cup. “The penance is another cup of coffee.”
“Are you going to help Mummy over this blackmail business?”
“I’ve done what I can. But now Morgan’s been murdered the police will have to be told about it. It risks people’s lives not to.”
“She was relying on you rather.”
“I’m aware of that. What do you want me to do? Go gunning for whoever it is?”
“Isn’t that better than a dreadful scandal?”
Piers said, “So everyone has an attack of the vapours when I go to prison for six months for driving a getaway car but it’s okay if I’m sent down for life for murder trying to keep the Ashley name pure.”
He walked out.
Chapter Ten
Len Dorney’s ‘manor’, in Hackney in the East End, an area of some twelve square miles and roughly bounded by Graham Road to the north and the Grand Union Canal to the south, was all urban, the only green open spaces worth mentioning those of London Fields and Well Street Common. It was near the latter that Dorney lived, in a red brick Victorian semi-detached house in a cul-de-sac.
One did not, however, arrive at the house unannounced if one valued a long and healthy life. One did not, for that matter, go to the house at all, business being carried out at an office over a shop in Mare Street. It was to these premises that Piers went. Rolt had not sent him, he had made the decision after having a conversation with a man in a pub in Soho.
Dorney had decided, rightly, that a business purporting to be an educational video distributors would not attract many casual callers. Those who climbed the narrow stairs were either expected, having appointments, or had already been spotted by the lookouts who had warned those within. Piers had not made an appointment. It would make no difference if he had.
The lookout — Vince, on this occasion — was standing talking to Jacko, a disabled man who had a flower stall on the corner of Bush Road. Vince went from sight as soon as he caught sight of Piers, not even waiting to see if he was heading for what Dorney liked to describe as his HQ. Piers knew that he had gone down the alley into the car park behind the shops, run up the fire escape, probably two steps at a time, and from that climbed through a window into a room used as a store. Len Dorney’s office was next door to this.
Bracing himself, Piers mounted the stairs. He wondered who would be on duty and how many of them there would be. Too many probably. They might be waiting for him in the small, dark space at the top of the stairs just in front of the lavatory door.
They were, men he had never seen before.
“Okay, let’s leave it at that for a moment,” Dorney said a while later. He stared with the intensity of a cat at Piers as he was hauled up from the floor.
“Still got that rebellious look on your face?” Dorney asked. “Yes, I think you have.” He signalled to his henchmen.
It was the mildest retribution he could expect: being held while his face was slapped until he either passed out or vomited. Both of the goals were well in sight when he received what he knew were the final blows, back-handers, the rings on the man’s finger splitting his lips like over-ripe plums. Then he was allowed to fall to the floor again and find a corner where he could retch in comparative privacy.
“I told you to report to me when you were released,” Dorney said after a while. No one seemed to be in any hurry.
Piers crawled to a chair and used it to pull himself up. “You still have the same methods,” he said with difficulty, mopping the blood with his handkerchief.
“D’you want some more? Answer the question.”
Piers sat on the chair. “You didn’t ask me one.” When Dorney raised a hand in another signal he added, “I was shot, you stupid bastard.”
Dorney’s small eyes almost disappeared into his head in amazement. “Shot!”
Piers nodded.
“You could still have got a message to me.”
“With the police sitting at my bedside?”
Dorney dismissed the other three.
“Who are those vermin?” Piers asked furiously.
“New recruits.”
“Recruits! Since when have you employed such riff-raff?”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Dorney said uneasily. “It’s only snouts who are rich men these days round here. All the best people went down with you. I’m doing this last job and then clearing out.”
“The jewellery snatch?”
“How did you hear about it?” Dorney hissed.
“Now you’re adding insult to injury,” Piers said. “I seem to remember being your right-hand man. It’s my business to know everything that goes on.”
Dorney eyed him narrowly. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth about being shot? You look all right to me.”
Piers pulled off his track suit top and tee shirt.
“Holy Mother,” Dorney muttered.
“I’m waiting for an apology. I resent being treated like some little erk who’s done something wrong. Setting those three on me was the mark of a petty gangster, not the sharp businessman you keep telling me you are.”
“Drink?” Dorney asked nervously.
“Not with this mouth, thank you. When’s the big job?”
“It’ll only happen if I can get the personnel.”
“You give me a few names of likely candidates and I’ll get them on the pay roll.”
“It’s not as easy as that,” Dorney said, sitting in the chair behind his desk. “They’re simply not available.”
“Then let us two do it. We’re worth ten of that rabble you’ve got now. Where are they from — the other side of the river?”
“Sub-contracted from Gerry North’s lot. I was thinking of getting rid of them to be honest.”
“So we do the jewellery job then?”
“I never get involved personally.”
“If it’s your last job, it’ll prevent a lot of loose ends to be taken care of. No people to be paid off who might talk. No one to know about it in detail but us two.”
“I’ll think about it,” Dorney said. He opened a drawer of the desk and withdrew a thick wad of money. “This is your wages for while you were doing time. But don’t count on any apologies. I expect people to do as they’re told, getting shot or not. If you step out of line again you’ll get the same, only it’ll go on a lot longer and might spoil your pretty face for always. Now get out. I know where to find you.”
Piers took the money and stuffed it in his pocket. “My little bird also said that it was the Van den Hooper diamonds you were keen on lifting. When they come to this country to be displayed in a Bond Street jewellers. It’ll have to be real pros for that job. With hardware — good shots. If you rely on yobbos you’ll be finished.”
“I know where to find you,” Dorney said again.
Piers took two taxis to reach Woodford with a very short bus journey in between. This, of course, was to shake off anyone tailing him. He explained his appearance to the taxi drivers as resulting from an attempted mugging. Rolt, however, expected a more accurate account than this and it was only after Piers had gone into great detail that he summoned the resident medical orderly to attend to his injuries. He was, in short, angry.
“You could have jeopardised the entire operation by such hasty action,” the Commander said, tossing the wad of money that Piers had given him into a drawer.
“My information was that the job was next week,” Piers said. “I met someone in the Sun and Thirteen Cantons who’s given me useful info before. It seemed important to follow it up immediately.”
“The Van den Hooper Collection is due to arrive here in a fortnight’s time. It would have been a good idea if you’d checked up on that first.”
“Dorney’s temper wouldn’t have cooled if I’d left it any longer — if anything the reverse.”
Rolt was the first to recognise that it took courage to go somewhere where you knew you were in for a hiding. He just wished that sometimes the man before him would act in less impetuous fashion. He said, “I’d like you to look at some mug-shots while you’re here. If we can put names to those faces that Dorney’s hired, we can keep track of them.”
“He said he was thinking of getting rid of them.”
“Is he now? Then our Len will have to be careful. They’re an ugly bunch in more ways than one.”
*
“What’s the secrecy?” Sylvia whispered as Piers slipped past her out of the darkness into the hall and quickly closed the door.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” he replied.
“I heard the car and wondered who it was.”
He removed his overcoat and she took it from him and hung it up.
“I’m sorry about Thursday — I couldn’t come.”
Sylvia exclaimed in horror as she saw his face in the much brighter light coming from the kitchen. She touched his mouth with one gentle hand.
“That wasn’t really why I couldn’t come,” he explained. “I’m not going to use it as an excuse. It happened afterwards.”
“Come in the warm.” She led the way, having made a lightning visit into the kitchen for a bottle of wine and two glasses.
“You haven’t seen me if anyone asks,” he said. “I’ll be hung, drawn and quartered if the boss finds out I came here.”
“I’m flattered that a man should risk so messy a death for my company,” Sylvia said with a grin. “Oh, damn, I’ve forgotten the opener.”
Piers took the wine bottle from her, went into the kitchen, found the corkscrew and opened it. It amused him that his visit seemed to have flummoxed her a little.
“Your health,” Sylvia said. “I hope you’re going to let me paint you.”
“D’you have special rates for ex-cons?”
“Poppycock! About you being an ex-con, I mean. I charge one thousand pounds and it’s worth every penny. That’s framed, of course.”
“Done.”
“Are you serious?” she said, eyes round with surprise. “I wasn’t touting for trade.”
“You denigrate yourself. I’m very honoured. And I hope there won’t be any unseemly arguments if I insist on giving you half the money at the first sitting.”
“What kind of backdrop would you like?” she wanted to know, unable to prevent herself thinking about lighting, whether he should be seated, if it should be a study indoors or out.
“Oh, I was thinking of something along the lines of most of the stuff at the Hall. You know the sort of thing — cherubs and flowers and just a wisp of material to cover the naughty bits as one wafts through the air.” He chuckled.
Sylvia, who believed in being utterly direct in such matters, said, “So in other words you feel like taking everything off right now?” When she had spoken thus she rather wished she hadn’t as she saw the expression that flitted over his face.
“London was ugliness and pain, argument and bad feeling,” he whispered.
“Then come and make pleasure,” she invited, holding both arms out to him.
Pleasure there was, she thought later, breathlessly accommodating plenitude. No woman could ever accuse him of being a selfish lover. There was also the merest tinge of earthiness, a facet that made her wonder if the woman who had initiated him into the art of lovemaking had been French or Italian. After these reflections, the very lavishness of what he was doing robbed her of any constructive thought whatsoever.
“I assume you don’t want celestial virgins,” she said softly into his ear quite a while afterwards.
“In the painting?” he enquired.
“At any time.”
“No, I’ve no time for blokes who sleep with young girls and get them into trouble. Mature women are far more interesting too. Girls giggle.”
“How about someone your own age?”
“I haven’t met anyone yet.”
“How old are you, Piers?”
“Twenty-four.”
“How long have you been in the police?” When he did not reply immediately she said, “I know because you relax when you’re with me. You are yourself. That’s why you came to me tonight — because the strain of being someone else was too much for you after you’d been hurt.”
“Five years,” he said. “A special undercover unit. I actually wanted to go into the army but at the interview said I was also interested in the police. I was immediately asked a lot of questions and then they shunted me along the corridor to talk to a shrink. He got it out of me that I’d also wanted to go on the stage. Well, after more interviews, medicals and so forth, I was asked if I wanted to join a new police unit. That’s how the department recruits. You have to actually attain a standard that would get you into the SAS. You’re trained for a while by them. You go to drama school for three months in order to learn how to pretend. There’s no attending the police college at Hendon, no passing-out parades, no uniforms, and utter secrecy. If you get involved with really important jobs you can’t even tell your next of kin what you’re doing. I opted for that straight away. I suppose it was a way of getting my own back for a rigid upbringing. That’s very childish — I know that now.”
