The Shy Traffickers (Professor Dobie Book 4) Page 17

  “Before my time,” Crumb said.

  “And mine, for that matter. So fucking what? It’s gang wars I’m talking about, sweetie. Never any closed season for that. And we’re not the only ones who’re looking for all that high-grade Colombian, oh by no means the only ones. We have to assume, don’t we? – that this Coyle character is still the boyo who knows where it’s cached, or at least is agenting for someone who does. Maybe he told Primrose about it and maybe he didn’t, but Primrose won’t be telling anyone else and that at least’s for sure.”

  … A privilege, of course, Crumb thought, to be permitted entry, if only briefly, to the innermost cogitations, if that’s what they were, of his case director. A young DI can learn a great deal in that way from a seasoned and experienced commander and anyway he had to listen to all this balls because he had no other choice. His own thoughts, however, were otherwhere, being directed chiefly towards the recollection of the pleasingly rounded outlines of Olly’s new shot-silk blouse. He was now convinced that there would have been time for a quickie, after all, and while he had been reluctant to take up the no doubt kindly-intended option at the time, such are the inconsistencies of human nature that … Yes. Quite so. Making an unobtrusive adjustment to the belt of his trousers he said plaintively, in a high squeaky voice,

  “Pickimup. Noprop-lem.”

  Dim Smith gave him a glance of studied disfavour. “Be your age, cobber. I sent an alert out hours ago. A red alert at that. Bit of a risk, seeing we can’t hold the prick for anything that I can see, but … his behaviour’s been so peculiar. Or Let’s say puzzling. Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, well, he’s a weirdo.”

  “Granted. Granted. All the same … Look at it this way. What does he do? Comes up here to keep an appointment, to make some kind of a handover deal, we know all about that. Should’ve been here for half an hour at least. In fact it’s just over five minutes. Then he comes out again, walks a way down the street and does a bunk. Makes no kind of sense.”

  “Because he heard the shot. Panicked, maybe.”

  “Yes, but why did he come down in the first place? When he should have been—”

  “He’d arranged to meet his wife there, hadn’t he? To collect his bag. He wouldn’t have wanted her to come up to the office for obvious—”

  “Why would he have needed his bag right then? I mean, we thought she’d be bringing in a sample of the merchandise, something like that … In fact there was nothing in the bag. Just some old clobber and the gun.”

  “Well … Then he must have wanted the gun.”

  Dim Smith shook his curly head. “No way Primrose would have let him take a gun into the office. Those geezers just don’t work that way. No, he must have wanted it for when he left the office. In case there was some kind of a double-cross. See what I mean?”

  “Likely enough,” Crumb said.

  “Given the nature of the people concerned, yes, I would say so.”

  “Or maybe he did have the samples in the bag but his wife did a switch. Took the stuff out of the bag and took the gun along instead. It may not be our direct concern but after all the woman shot him, there’s no doubt at all about that.”

  “Ummmmm,” Dim Smith said.

  He moved round behind the desk to stand for a while at the window. Outside, street lamps shone on an empty road and an empty strip of pavement, the broken circle of their orange-tinted refulgence just reaching the trees inside the park railings. He had to be standing, Crumb thought, exactly where Primrose had been standing when the shot had been fired. If some chap were down there now with a rifle, or even with a decently accurate handgun …

  No. Too much to hope for. You didn’t win promotion by sighing for the moon.

  “Why,” Dim Smith said, “would he be standing just here? …” As if he’d been reading Crumb’s thoughts, almost. Crumb blushed guiltily. “Could have any number of reasons, sir.” The bastard seemed to be full of whys all of a sudden. How would he know?

  “Such as?”

  “Getting a breath of air on a hot summer evening. Or maybe he was looking out for someone, well … for that woman, maybe. Who was bringing the bag.”

  Dim Smith surveyed the scene again. “He’d have seen her car arrive all right. Over in that car park.”

  “Yessir, so if that Coyle bleeder had told him he was expecting her—”

  “But then he’d have seen her getting ready to shoot him.”

  “Not if she were down there behind the trees. As we know she was. Well, he couldn’t have seen her, could he, he’d hardly be likely to go on standing there—”

  Crumb broke off. Dim Smith turned round. There were sounds of a disturbance outside, in the secretary’s office. The repercussions appeared to have arrived and the duty constable appeared to be attempting to hold them at bay. Unsuccessfully. The door opened and a bulky gentleman came in. A bulky gentleman in a remarkably well-tailored pearl-grey two-piece suit. Dim Smith observed both suit and gentleman with some misgivings. The suit he immediately diagnosed as by Huntsman and the gentleman wearing it almost certainly hadn’t had to wait six months for it, as lesser mortals did. These were repercussions all right, all right.

  “Well, now,” the repercussions said. “Dimbleby Smith, isn’t it? How’s it going?”

  “Well enough,” Dim Smith said. “Well enough. In fact I—”

  “Dim Smith, I believe. To your friends and colleagues. And this is …?”

  Dim Smith did the honours. “Detective-Inspector Crumb, George. One of the colleagues you just mentioned.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” the bulky gentleman said. He didn’t look it, however, and Crumb decided not to accept the proffered handshake, which was lucky because the bulky gentleman didn’t in fact offer one. “Stainer’s the name. George Stainer. Rather a mess you boys have made in here.”

  “Criminal investigation under way, George. You know how it is. Few better, I imagine.”

  The bulky gentleman ignored this sly little dig. “A murder investigation, as I understand it.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “What’s not correct is you two being in on it. You’re Special Branch, unless I’m mistaken. I’ve a feeling I may find myself obliged to ask Colonel Cartwright for an explanation of your conduct in that respect.”

  Dim Smith, to do him credit, showed no sign of shaking in his shoes. “I’m sure if your legal advisor would get in touch—”

  “I don’t have a lawyer. I am a lawyer. A barrister, in fact. Though I don’t practice.” This was both true and a matter of record. Dim Smith, unfortunately, had forgotten it. But Stainer, having made his point, smiled winningly. “One of the reasons why I don’t practice is because I have a habit of getting off on the wrong foot. Very regrettable. It upsets potential clients. I certainly hope I haven’t done that here.”

  In fact the real reason why he didn’t practice was because the line of business in which he was presently engaged was so preposterously lucrative that his earnings as a silk would have seemed and indeed would have been trifling in comparison. And since it was clearly that line of business that had brought him on this occasion to Primrose’s office, Dim Smith was prepared to proceed with caution. “… You got here pretty quickly, I must say.”

  “That’s another of my habits.”

  “So we have to assume you’re already well informed.”

  “Yes, we do, don’t we?” Stainer blew out his cheeks and emitted a jowly chuckle, seating himself as he did so in the visitor’s foam-rubber armchair. The springs creaked under his considerable weight. “I make a point of being well-informed. Because I make a lot of money by being well-informed. So I pay a lot of money to be well-informed. By the right people.” He directed a mildly speculative glance towards Dim Smith and Crumb, each in turn. “Might well be worth your while to remember that.”

  Well, it just might, Crumb thought. Stainer had a very persuasive way with him. Crumb was impressed. Because this was … George Stainer, dammit. Any time
Olly wanted to know what a kingpin of crime was, right, he’d show her George Stainer. In comparison to whose under-the-counter payoffs, the little contributions Olly made to his slush fund from the Snipe’s entertainments accounts would be … yes, just that. Trifling in comparison. Unfortunately, Dim Smith, as his senior officer, would clearly be standing first in line. Pity, that. “… The truth is,” Dim was saying, “we could use a little information ourselves.” Playing hard-to-get, the cunning bastard. “If you’re prepared to be of assistance to our enquiries …”

  “Oh, of course. Always very happy to help the police.” Stainer sat back and crossed his legs, displaying benevolent interest. “That’s if I can. If I can.”

  “Well, I take it the deader … the deceased was an employee of yours, for a start.”

  “I’m certainly the President of Codron Corporation. And Rodney Primrose is … was one of our Regional Directors. But I’ve had few personal contacts with him, I’m sorry to say.”

  “And your Regional Directors … do they often get murdered?”

  “Not to my knowledge, no. And,” George Stainer said, twinkling away as though conducting a TV chat show, “I think you may take it that I would know if they had.”

  “So why would Mr Primrose get himself murdered?”

  “That is what I’ve been asking myself. Very strange indeed. But,” Stainer said, “no doubt the police will soon get to the bottom of the matter. That’s what we pay them for. Among other things.”

  “We?”

  “The taxpayers.”

  “Ah.”

  Very thoughtfully, Dim Smith drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his nose with it. Stainer continued to regard him with polite attention. There was no reason, Crumb thought, why we shouldn’t kick the bugger out; this was still a scene-of-crime situation, after all, and there was a notice on the door to that effect. It was just that Stainer had appeared, with no apparent effort, to have taken the situation over; there was a constable guarding the outer door, for that matter, but the wolly hadn’t stopped Stainer from coming in and now that he was in, Dim Smith didn’t seem to have any intention of ordering him out. This although he couldn’t, surely? – have any hope of getting any kind of useful information out of the feller. In the criminal hierarchy, as Crumb supposed, Stainer occupied about the same position as that of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police on the other side, if it was the other side; you couldn’t be too sure of anything these days. Except of course that Crumb’s entire monthly salary wouldn’t have covered the cost of those hand-made Italian calf-leather shoes Stainer was sporting; Crumb was sure of that, anyway. “… So what other additional staff did you employ here?” Dim Smith, tucking away his handkerchief with a flourish. Stainer, still twinkling.

  “I understand there’s a secretarial assistant, a Nicholas something … I misremember. This is not one of our larger branches, of course. In fact, only just opened. February last.”

  To gain certain tax advantages, Dim Smith presumed. “And yet it appears you own the entire property.”

  “That’s so. The residential flats beneath us are under rental.”

  “But the tenants are in no way connected to your organisation?”

  “How could they be? They’re residential flats, as I explained.”

  “Some people like to conduct their business at home, though. Indeed it’s a growth industry, as I believe.”

  “Their business,” Stainer said, “is no business of mine, whatever it is. Or of Primrose’s, either.” He allowed his gaze to move briskly round the office and the piles of paperasserie stacked around it. “As perhaps you’ve already seen is a matter of record.”

  “Well, he wasn’t shot by anyone in the building. Or by anyone who was inside the building at the time. So—”

  “So that line of questioning would seem to be immaterial. And in any case, beyond what must be your immediate line of duty. Perhaps,” Stainer said, rising to his feet with the air of one who has gained the upper hand in a brief and altogether unimportant skirmish, “I’d do better to have a word with your Mr Pontin. Or with Detective-Superintendent Pontin, I beg his pardon. And right away. My time is valuable and so, I’m sure, is his.”

  “My colleague here will be pleased to take you round to the station.”

  Crumb, day-dreaming again (or possibly night-dreaming, given the lateness of the hour,) looked up sharply.

  “That’s very good of you, Mr. er …”

  “Come.”

  “What?”

  “Come, sir. If you’d like to crumb along-a me we’ll go round there right away.”

  Stainer, blinking slightly, allowed himself to be conducted down the stairs to where, parked directly outside, a very large and very shiny limousine seemed, in the prevailing dimness, to be extending its length down virtually the whole of the street. Not, Crumb observed, the expected Rolls-Royce but then, given the nature of Stainer’s business, it was natural that he shouldn’t wish to appear ostentatious. A courteous gent in the uniform of a chauffeur and with the overall appearance of a partially incapacitated orang-outang hastened to open the rear door and Stainer entered upon his domain without further ado. Crumb discreetly followed. The chimp then resumed his post at the Command Centre and almost at once the vehicle moved soundlessly off. It could safely be assumed, Crumb thought, that the chimp was already advised of the route to the Cardiff Central Police Station, as indeed of the route to any other fuzz box in the entire United Kingdom; he crossed his legs, therefore, and leaned cosily back into the all-engulfing upholstery. After a while,

  “What was it exactly you were wanting to know, sir?”

  - he politely inquired.

  9

  The Special Branch boys weren’t expecting to get much sleep that night and the uniformed branch, being now in the initial stages of a murder inquiry, didn’t expect to either. Olly, being in her way no less assiduous in pursuit of a promising trail, also spent a somewhat disturbed night, telephoning wildly this way and that throughout the small hours, with results that were first made known to Kate when she descended from the Valley Lines train onto platform 7 of the Central railway station. Comfortably ensconced in Dobie’s commodious flat and somewhat wearied by her experiences of the previous evening, she had slept more than ordinarily well and indeed a little longer than she’d intended; the morning tabloids, thus, were already on display on the station bookstalls and on her descent from the train she was immediately regaled with the sight of a prominent – indeed, glaring – headline which said,

  THE KILLERS

  Only The Snipe Dares Name Them

  So far, so good. The follow-up leads, however, were a good deal more startling.

  MED CLINIC FRONT FOR MURDER INC

  DRUG GANG KILL SHAKES UNDERWORLD

  “Oh my God,” Kate said. Out loud.

  Closer inspection revealed further and even more excruciating horrors. Namely, a blurred photographic reproduction of her own pleasing features bearing the puzzling caption,

  GLAM DEATH DOCTOR EVADES ARREST AS DRAGNET CLOSES

  alongside an even more miasmic representation of Professor Dobie in convivial mood and hence resembling the actor Clint Eastwood on the verge of Dirty-Harrying someone all over the pavement. This obvious caricature, perhaps for this reason, bore no caption at all, words having presumably failed some unfortunate sub-editor as now they had failed Kate. Well, almost. What she, as she now realised, had actually said was, “Oh fuck!”… also out loud … but this limited expletive didn’t do justice to her feelings at all. It did, however, cause a middle-aged gentleman in a tweed jacket at that moment advancing upon her to withdraw hastily and with a wounded expression. Kate clearly hadn’t made his day, either.

  Her own day was getting worse and worse. People were actually buying the damned thing. Well, that perhaps wasn’t so very surprising; whether or not DRUG GANG KILL was indeed shaking the underworld, Olly’s report of it would certainly stir up a certain amount of local interest, given that hal
f the population of Cardiff East were Kate’s patients or at any rate, there’d been times when it had seemed that way. And Dobie was also quite well known – not to say notorious – in certain quarters. Kate moved closer to the stall and began to survey from a range of about nine inches the covers of a stack of magazines displaying young ladies without very much in the way of clothes on, not because of professional interest in their anatomical abnormalities (though in some cases these were indeed remarkable) but with the intention of in this way concealing her face from the public in general and the people strolling along the platform in particular. Also, in order to collect her thoughts. She herself felt rather as though some considerable part of her own outer clothing had been abruptly and forcibly removed, leaving her exposed to the lubricious gaze of innumerable eyes; the tabloid press, as she knew, often has that effect upon those individuals upon whom it chooses to bestow its attention, but this was her first direct experience of that effect and she found it difficult to cope with. Dobie, of course … but that was different. Dobie seemed to possess some kind of natural immunity to many of the things that affect normal persons. It was clear, in any case, that whatever happened now, Kate was screwed. GLAM DEATH DOCTORS may invite the awed attention of a paying public but they sure as hell don’t build up a convincing patient list. The BMA don’t take a very rosy view of them, either. In fact, Kate thought, her despair increasing, after this I’ll be lucky if I’m allowed to prescribe myself a couple of aspirin when I have a headache. As I have now.

  … Though given the peculiarly pressing nature of her short-term problems she hardly need consider those that might arise in the relatively distant future. Almost the only crumb of comfort in her present situation had to be derived from the contemplation of Dobie’s (normally) quite prepossessing features right alongside her own mug shot; for the first time in the past two years and a bit Kate had woken up that morning aware of the absence of a large lumbering object, human or near-human in semblance, making strange p’ff-p’ff-p’ff noises in the bed beside her, a proximity she had grown to find somehow reassuring … or well, no, not reassuring exactly, that was hardly the word to use of anyone as manifestly loopy as Dobie was, but anyway unquestionably there, an object that would in due course have to be given breakfast and have its clothes brushed and its glasses cleaned and its nose wiped with a freshly-laundered hanky and then sent off to work carrying its lecture notes in its briefcase and NOT carrying instead her own best crocodile-skin handbag … Kate sighed heavily at the recollection. The trouble is, she thought, that this morning everything’s back to bloody front. This morning I need him. I need him to tell me what to do. Because I don’t know …