Corridors of Death (2 page)

The police arrived while Amiss was occupied in drawing up a rough mental list of the prime suspects present. His conclusions had such horrendous implications that he could feel only sympathy for the policemen just now crossing the threshold of what must be a grade-one hairy investigation. One Cabinet minister, one junior minister, one major industrialist, one senior civil servant – Jesus, Scotland Yard would need the heavy mob for this. It wasn’t just that they were people in the public eye who were nervous of their reputations. There wasn’t one of them who hadn’t arrived at his present position through his ability to obfuscate while appearing to clarify. Some of them had had thirty or more years’ experience of deflecting straight questions by a combination of bluff, clichés and charm. Amiss could spot only three people in the room in addition to himself who were inexperienced enough to tell someone their names without prior calculation. The police would fare better at a coven of Wittgenstein’s apostles.

The uniformed vanguard were discreet enough, but nothing compared to the three grave-looking, nattily suited men who slid quietly into the room after them. Well, thought Amiss, they would hardly send the Riot Squad. But wasn’t it a bit sneaky that they weren’t even wearing black shiny toecaps and blue shirts? Admittedly they did look relatively fit – a dead give-away in this company. Amiss saw one of the younger pair give a quick glance around the room and betray by a start his recognition of a number of familiar faces. The oldest of the three walked up to the Chancellor – already on his feet and wearing a look of relief – and, after a murmured consultation, proceeded to the end of the room and cleared his throat. ‘Good afternoon. My name is Detective Superintendent James Milton and I am in charge of this enquiry. I am sorry that you have been detained for so long already. I recognize that you are all busy people, but I fear I must ask you to show even greater patience. If you wish to send any urgent messages, Detective Sergeant Pike will arrange to have them transmitted. Detective Sergeant Romford and I will use the conference room next door as an office. We would like to see you there one by one. Perhaps the Chancellor would kindly accompany us now?’

As the babble of questions broke out Milton shook his head, expressed his regrets about his inability to answer them and, accompanied by Romford, left with the Chancellor meekly in tow. Amiss waited his turn to add to Pike’s list of messages a telephone number and the information that he would be having a long lunch-break and sat back to continue his speculations.

It became quickly apparent that the pecking-order was being observed irreproachably. The Secretary of State for Energy was summoned after ten minutes, and as the afternoon was whiled away with subdued gossip, paper work and
The Times
crossword, senior politicians were followed by the President of the Confederation of British Industry, the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress and a succession of lesser figures. It was all as efficient and protocol-conscious as a Buckingham Palace dinner. Either Scotland Yard superintendents carried books on etiquette or the superintendent had found an adviser. Amiss was too well aware of his lowly status to be surprised when he found himself the last to be called.

He found Milton at the head of the conference table, and looking decidedly less composed – to a degree that could not be explained solely by the steady four hours it had taken him to get through about eighteen luminaries and their attendant staff. His lean face was set in lines of strain, his dark hair was rumpled and he kept nervously disassembling and reassembling his expensive pen. Amiss felt sufficiently sorry for him to go out of his way to offer information about himself. He saw more than a flicker of interest in Milton’s face when he explained that he had been Clark’s Private Secretary, followed by a decided look of relief when he proffered a few incautious words about Sir Nicholas’s general unpopularity.

After they had taken a formal statement of his movements between the end of the meeting and the discovery of the body, Milton sent Romford back to Scotland Yard to get his notes typed. He looked fixedly at Amiss. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m in need of help and you’re in a position to give it.’ Amiss drew breath to make polite noises of denial, but Milton cut him short. ‘I’ve sat here for four hours taking statements from people who have overwhelmed me with unctuous drivel about the fine qualities of the deceased. They have given me not one single fact I didn’t drag out of them. They saw nothing, heard nothing and can think of no reason why anyone would murder such a fine public servant. Nearly half of them, God help me, have made helpful suggestions about muggers and tramps – despite the fact that I have explained to each of them that Sir Nicholas was killed in the gentlemen’s lavatory on this, the twenty-seventh floor of Embankment Tower, an office block which boasts four sober security guards and an apparently water-tight entry-pass system. Not only, it seems, did you know the man better than anyone else, you are the first to have offered me anything other than pious crap. You can point me at likely suspects, help me to understand motives and explain to me what goes on in bloody Whitehall. And what’s more, you have a cast-iron alibi unless you and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are involved in a conspiracy.’

Amiss liked this policeman. But then there was the ethos of the civil service. He thought about breaking ranks, ratting, letting the side down, being over-zealous, bringing the service into disrepute and all the other things he would be doing if he gave Milton the kind of cooperation he deserved. He thought about his career – blotting his copybook, demonstrating poor judgement, displaying disloyalty towards colleagues – all the accusations he would be open to if he were found acting as a copper’s nark. He thought of the semi-helpful information he could give Milton if he left out the bits that might be traced back to him. Then he thought about his self-respect and his sympathy for the under-dog. If ever there was an under-dog it was this poor sod, who was going to make a long, slow and tedious balls of the whole business if someone didn’t give him a helping hand. Milton didn’t look away while Amiss was thinking all this through. Amiss liked that too.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you the dirt, and without any reservations, on two conditions. You guarantee that none of my colleagues ever knows where you got your information from – and that means meeting me when and where I suggest – and you compensate me for the risk I’m running by keeping me daily in touch with your investigation, thus satisfying my curiosity.’

‘What risk could you possibly be running that would entitle you to be kept informed of the progress of a confidential police investigation?’ asked Milton, covering his grin with a stern copper look. ‘The same sort of risk you would run if you pointed the finger at a crooked colleague,’ said Amiss. Milton looked him in the eyes for a minute and the grin broke. ‘Done,’ he said and held out his hand.

Monday Evening

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3

They met a couple of hours later in a seedy curry-house of Amiss’s choice – well away from Whitehall and staffed by waiters with limited English. Milton had had time to throw a few noncommittal scraps to the slavering pack of newshounds, go back to the Yard for consultations with superiors, arrange for the processing of the statements and the routine checking of alibis, check that the preliminary pathology report had come up with nothing helpful and dismiss his sergeants for the evening. Amiss had had time to show his face in his office, confirm to colleagues that he had undergone only a routine interview with the police, make a few telephone calls, talk to the Deputy Secretary who had already taken over responsibility for Clark’s work, and ensure that papers for immediate action were being dispatched to the proper quarters. There was no need to cancel any of Sir Nicholas’s appointments; the civil-service machine was more than capable of coping with sudden death, however scandalous. Sir Nicholas’s meetings and speeches from tomorrow onwards would be dealt with by his temporary successor, Douglas Sanders, who would by morning have digested enough briefing material to enable him to behave as if he had been in the job for years. Sanders’s responsibilities would be similarly taken over and the only sufferers would be the poor devils who were now required within a few hours to expand existing briefing to cope with the newfound ignorance of some of their superiors.

Sanders dismissed Amiss with an approving nod and Amiss mentally saw a tick on his personnel report under the section headed ‘Ability to cope with pressure’. He hurried off with relief to the twilight environment of the Star of India, where Milton was already lurking in a distant corner. ‘Ah, Robert,’ Milton hailed him. ‘Sit down and have a drink, and tell me why, at a moment of personal tragedy, you are smirking all over your face.’

‘It’s the masterly way in which you employ my Christian name to denote our new status as unofficial colleagues, James. It is James, not Jim, I trust. Civil servants don’t like diminutives; they’re considered vulgar.’

‘God Almighty, don’t tell me that the use of Christian names is another civil-service mystery. It’s very simple with us. You just call everyone your senior “sir”. And I’m afraid it is Jim.’

‘I can see you’ve got a lot to learn. To put it simply, if you’ve got no other evidence to go on, the use of the Christian name is the key to finding out a man’s status and prospects. Thus, if you are sitting with an official of immense importance and two men enter the room – one young and spotty, one middle-aged and distinguished looking – you may assume that the former works for the latter. Then you hear young and spotty address your host as Alaric and middle-aged and distinguished address him as Mr Snodgrass. This means that young and spotty is a high-flyer, has a good degree – probably from Oxbridge – and has come into the service at the bottom of the administrative ladder. The other poor fellow, who may still outrank him, is a decent soul who has worked his way up the executive ranks but has little hope of ever attaining real power. Conversely, your high-flyer will probably be addressed by his minions by his Christian name – because he can afford to be seen to be democratic – while the other honest fellow, who has been obliged to spend years grovelling to his superiors only to be overtaken by people half his age, will cling to his few privileges and will be addressed as Mr Blenkinsop by all who work for him.’

Milton’s stunned look touched Amiss’s heart and he broke off his discourse. ‘Sorry. You’ve enough troubles without my digressing on the anthropology of the civil service. I’ve dug up some information for you, but I want yours first.’

They paused to order a meal and then Milton leant forward warily. ‘So far we know that Sir Nicholas Clark died in the cubicle of the lavatory after a heavy blow to the base of the skull from a small steel abstract sculpture, the top part of which provided a useful handle.’

‘He’d have liked that. Always fancied himself a bit of an aesthete. But who in God’s name was carrying round with him an object like that? You don’t get many modern-art enthusiasts at IGGY.’

‘IGGY?’

‘Sorry. The group is called the Industry and Government Group, and we do go in for disrespectful acronyms.’ At the look on Milton’s face Amiss hastily yielded the floor.

‘No one was carrying it about with him. It happened to be conveniently placed on a stand about six feet away from the lavatory. You must have seen it. Two interweaving circles on a round base.’

‘Not…?’

‘Yes. The piece entitled “Reconciliation”.’

‘I’m beginning to like this murderer more and more,’ said Amiss gloomily. ‘It’s affecting my motivation.’

‘Believe me,’ said Milton. ‘There are heavy odds against our man being either a prankster with a keen sense of the ridiculous or a zealot determined to make the world a better place by ridding it of someone who, I infer, was a blot on the civil service escutcheon. It’s very rarely the motive is anything worthier than greed or fear.’

‘All right. Go on.’

‘Sir Nicholas was discovered at 1.55 by an Embankment Tower Accommodation Officer summoned to investigate the mysterious immovability of the cubicle door. By the time the police doctor arrived it was possible only to estimate the time of death as being between approximately 12.45 and 1.15. There were no finger-prints on the top part of the sculpture and only a few half-hearted smudges on the base. Anyway, that was largely covered in blood and…’

‘Yes, yes. Don’t put me off my Chicken Biryani. Obviously any prints you identify will be those of people wholly unconnected with IGGY.’

‘Right. The murderer used one of those little linen towels laid on, I understand, on the days when there are important meetings in the conference room.’

‘Why was the cubicle door immovable anyway? Wouldn’t he have toppled forward when he was struck?’

‘It looks as if his murderer hit him as he pushed the cubicle door inwards. He would then certainly have fallen forward. As far as we can see the murderer then half closed the door and leaned the body against it so that Sir Nicholas’s weight pushed it shut. There are no gaps under those doors, so nothing was visible. Anyone who tried it would have found it resistant to pushing. That’s why it took so long to discover the body.’

‘Would the murderer have had to be particularly strong?’

‘No, he wouldn’t. The preliminary pathology report is of little help. It rules out only people of below average height and weight or the excessively tall. That excludes only half a dozen of the people who attended the IGGY meeting.’ Milton screwed his face up at the unpalatable acronym and took a gulp of lager.

‘So far, so bad. Have you managed to rule many out by checking alibis?’

‘Someone’s doing an exhaustive check now, but it looks as though it’s down to eight, all of whom can account for their movements but can’t produce witnesses for all of them. Virtually everyone except two of the civil servants went to the lavatory some time during that half hour.’