Corridors of Death (8 page)

Amiss was back at his desk shortly after 11.30, ready to get down to what he had already decided was his main business of the day. If he was going to be a grass, he might as well be a super-grass.

His first phone call, on a trumped-up excuse, was to a chatty man in the plastics recycling division. It was easy enough to manoeuvre Latham into talking about the people he knew who had been at the IGGY meeting. Latham had nothing to add to what Amiss already knew about Archibald Stafford, but he also knew Alfred Shaw pretty well. Amiss was thankful that he didn’t need to appear inquisitive. Latham loved gossiping too much to need prompting.

‘… so I don’t suppose Alf will be too sorry about what’s happened. There was no love lost between him and Clark.’

‘But they didn’t know each other well, did they?’

‘No. It was just Clark’s habit of calling him “Alf” – and sometimes “Sid” – in that sneery way he had when he found himself in company with those he deemed proles. Otherwise it was just a matter of the odd clash at meetings. We kept Alf away from Clark as much as possible, and he was quite happy dealing with us instead.’

That would be good news for Milton tonight, thought Amiss as he put the phone down. He wouldn’t want more motives. His next call – to the Private Secretary to Gerald Hunter, Secretary of State for Energy – was also encouragingly negative. It was obvious that Hunter would have had difficulty in recognizing Sir Nicholas if he met him in the street. Amiss couldn’t think of anyone who could tell him anything about Norman Grewe, Chairman of Industrial Electronics Ltd, but he was pretty sure he could be ruled out. He couldn’t think of any occasion other than the odd formal business dinner where they could have met. Grewe was a recent recruit to IGGY and wouldn’t have seen Sir Nicholas there more than twice.

Amiss decided to give up on Grewe. He had only one suspect left to investigate – Martin Jenkins, the President of the Fitters’ Union. He doubted if there would be anything positive here either. Clark wouldn’t have any dealings with Jenkins in the normal course of events. Amiss had had to give a lot of thought to fabricating an adequate excuse to ring the department’s trades union adviser, but it was a risk worth taking. Cronin was as gregarious and gossipy as Latham and liked nothing better than passing on discreditable bits of information about those people on whom he fawned professionally.

Cronin was in. That was a piece of luck. He spent most of his time hanging round trades union headquarters looking for juicy bits of scandal (and useful birds to pull. Eligible bachelor – he had no trouble. He was even a challenge – at the first dinner together, she always heard how his heart was broken ten years ago and he could never love again. That also provided a useful get-out when a more tempting prospect came in sight. The place was littered with women who had succumbed. This was his idea of keeping in touch with the grass roots.) He was delighted to hear from Amiss – so delighted that there was no danger of his doubting his reason for ringing up. They got the pretext over with quickly – Cronin giving Amiss the figure that was already staring up at him from a memorandum on his desk. Amiss fed him a few harmless bits of inside information on the happenings of the previous day, and the conversation came round to the trades unionists present.

‘At least they’ll be in the clear,’ he said. ‘Sir Nicholas never had much time for them.’

‘I’m not so sure of that,’ said a gleeful voice. ‘It’ll be fun if the police get to know about Jenkins and Sir Nicholas’s missus.’

‘What?’ yelled Amiss, temporarily off his guard.

‘Didn’t you know? It’s been the talk of the Fitters’ headquarters for ages. A life-long socialist bachelor falling for a classy piece like that? Dynamite.’

Amiss knew perfectly well that Cronin was capable of making a scandal out of the sight of two people chatting at a dinner party, so he couldn’t take this at face value.

‘You’re having me on.’

Cronin was piqued.

‘I am not. They’ve been seen lunching together several times and Jenkins’s secretary says they’re always ringing each other up.’

‘Well, stone the crows!’ Amiss doubted no longer. Cronin’s way with secretaries was legendary. He knew that the hand that controls the telephone has access to one hell of a lot of gossip. It was amazing how pathetically people trusted their secretaries. There were very few invulnerable to Cronin’s seedy charm, and the drinks he lavished on any likely source.

‘I suppose the police will get onto it eventually,’ said Cronin hopefully.

Yes, you shit
, thought Amiss.
There’s nothing you’d like better than seeing your avowed friend Jenkins embarrassed
.

‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ he said. ‘They didn’t look to me as if they had much of a clue about anything. But then, I only saw them for a few minutes. They may have TUC moles for all I know. Anyway, thanks for your help with the Extrusion stats. I knew you’d be able to help. See you.’

Amiss wondered if Cronin would ensure that the Yard got to know about Jenkins and Lady Clark and concluded that he wouldn’t. He would be too terrified of being spotted as the source and having his access to future scandal jeopardized. Did this come under the heading of urgent information of the kind Milton would need immediately? He thought so. The negative report on Alf Shaw could wait until the evening, but he’d better get a message about Jenkins through to Milton by the channels they had set up on their way to the tube the previous night.

He couldn’t get away without a chat with one of Sanders’s staff, so it was almost 1.00 – time for him to be off to the Cardinal – when he finally found an empty room with a telephone. He dialled the number he had been given and asked for Mrs Milton.

Tuesday Afternoon

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12

Milton had grabbed a hasty lunch in a pub frequented by civil servants from neighbouring offices. He found himself compulsively eavesdropping on their chat about work and people – especially once he had overheard several disparaging references to Sir Nicholas. He had time for quiet reflection only on his walk back to the Yard, and during that time he concluded that the postcard was probably a hoax. After all, the Yard received dozens of anonymous missives every day accusing anyone of anything. It would be credulous to believe this one. Still, he would have to go through the motions with Lady Clark and Martin Jenkins, though he would have to go very carefully. They would have every right to lodge an official complaint if they were interrogated closely on their private lives on the strength of an unsubstantiated allegation. Milton knew Jenkins’s reputation as a hard man, and Lady Clark would have the protection of her new status as grief-stricken widow.

It was ten to two when he reached his office. Romford was waiting with details of new appointments he had made and confirmation of double- and treble-checked alibis; the list of possible murderers from IGGY still remained at eight. He had a message asking Milton to ring his wife urgently at a Soho restaurant. Knowing that when Ann said urgent she meant urgent Milton told Romford to hold Archibald Stafford for a few minutes and rang the restaurant. Fortunately the staff knew Ann well. She did most of her business entertaining there. She was on within a minute.

‘Darling, your young man has been on to me already. He rang just before one. I liked him. He identified himself as Deep Throat.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Milton eagerly.

Just “Tell Jim the word is that Jenkins and Lady C. have been having it off.” ’

Milton thanked Ann profusely and rang off. Since he couldn’t admit to a source, he wouldn’t be able to use this information directly, but it would certainly make him easier in his mind while taking the necessary risks with the errant pair. He sighed. He didn’t really enjoy playing the heavy policeman, especially when it involved prying into intimate relationships. Still, he wasn’t being paid to have finer feelings. He would harden his heart before he saw Lady Clark at six. Now he had better focus on Archibald Stafford and his imminent departure from the Plastics Conversion Company.

Stafford was every envious little person’s idea of a prosperous man. From his hand-made shoes to his elegant hair he was spotless, faultlessly groomed and sweet-smelling – Colour-Supplement Man made flesh. He carried a hand-tooled leather executive case with brass trimmings and Milton made a private bet with himself that his car boasted a television set and a cocktail cabinet. He tried not to dislike him.

It wasn’t too hard. The first few routine minutes showed Stafford to be quite simply a nice man. Milton thought that he probably dressed like a prat because he thought it necessary to impress. There wasn’t any difficulty in getting the story of the government grant out of him. It was just a matter of well-placed questions about his professional relations with Sir Nicholas and the closeness of the links between his company and the department.

Not that this frankness meant anything, necessarily. Stafford might be nice, but he was clearly sensible as well, and had no reason to doubt that the police would hear about the circumstances of the grant from some civil servant or other. He didn’t, of course, know what Amiss had known about the importance of Sir Nicholas’s role in the affair, but he admitted his suspicions.

‘I did wonder, Superintendent, if Nicholas had been entirely frank with me. He assured me frequently that he was taking a personal interest in getting the grant approved, yet he never gave me any word of warning of what was going to happen. If I had had any foreknowledge I could have made a proper case for myself. I had been concentrating on making a case for the company.’

‘Did you tax him with this?’

‘I rang him at the weekend and asked him why he had said nothing. He was very stiff. Talked about departmental confidentiality and made me feel as if I had been improperly trying to pull strings. That was a distortion and I felt very sore about it. I never tried to misuse my friendship with Nicholas. He claimed to have a high opinion of my managerial talents and I reasonably assumed that he would pass this on.’

‘Did you have a row?’

‘Nicholas wasn’t the sort of man you could have a real row with. He just went stiffer and stiffer and more and more pompous and ended the conversation by saying he wished to express his regrets at my misfortune and hoped that when I had had time to get over it we could have lunch again.’

Milton wondered if this was true. Knowing the state of mind Sir Nicholas had been in over the weekend he could well have been intensely insulting to Stafford. He might even have made it clear that he had been instrumental in getting the offensive conditions attached to the offer. However, there was no way of checking up on this now. Perhaps Lady Clark might know something about the phone call. Nothing more to learn here.

Milton had just thanked Stafford and said goodbye when Romford dashed in unceremoniously with the news of the second murder.

13

The rather muted celebrations of Sir Nicholas’s staff were over by 2.30. They were necessarily muted because even Julia realized that there were limits to bad taste. After she had left just before 2.00 to relieve Gladys, who was manning the office alone, the conversation flagged and finally died. Amiss was too preoccupied with his private thoughts to inject any life into the proceedings, and at 2.30 he realized with a start that he had better be getting back to the office, as Sanders was due to move into Sir Nicholas’s room at 3.00 and it was up to him to remove in advance any of the late unlamented’s private belongings.

‘Shouldn’t we wait for Gladys?’ asked George.

‘Give her another ten minutes, but the poor old bat has probably gone shopping instead. You know she doesn’t really like coming to the pub.’

He walked back hurriedly, arriving to find Julia sitting comfortably in his chair painting her nails.

‘Nothing urgent?’

‘Not a thing. It’s been as quiet as the grave,’ and Julia began to laugh immoderately at her own wit.

‘Gladys didn’t turn up.’

‘Well, I don’t know where she went. She wasn’t here when I got back.’

‘That’s not like her,’ said Amiss, frowning. ‘I wonder if she felt ill and went home. But she’d have left a note.’

‘Oh, she probably thought it was O.K. to pop out shopping since everything was so quiet. You know she can’t resist the market at lunch-time.’

‘Come and give me a hand loading up Sir Nicholas’s belongings then, Julia – if your nail varnish will permit.’

‘It’s all been done, Robert. His wife and son came in just before I left and they seem to have cleared the lot.’

‘Lord, I should have been here to meet them.’

‘Well, we couldn’t find you so I did the honours. They didn’t seem to be in a chatty mood anyway.’

Amiss looked into the inner office and saw that indeed a clean sweep of intimate objects had been made. The desk and tables no longer displayed Sir Nicholas’s few ascetic
objets d’art
, and his pictures had gone as well. He debated whether to clear the drawers and small filing-cabinet, but decided against it. There would be very little of a personal nature there and Sanders had better be left to decide what he wanted to keep and what should be chucked out.

‘Mind you,’ said Julia, ‘I’m a bit surprised Gladys didn’t make it to the pub. She was dying to tell you about yesterday morning.’

‘What about yesterday morning?’

‘Her seeing Sir Nicholas after the IGGY meeting.’

‘What? She didn’t mention that this morning.’

‘You didn’t stay round long enough to hear. She remembered it with a shriek about half an hour after you left. You know how muddled she gets. It took that long for her to get the details straight and realize that she must have been one of the last to see him.’

‘Has she told the police?’

‘I told her she should, but she said she was that upset she wouldn’t do anything about it till after lunch. She’s probably trying to work up her courage with a quick rummage through the clothes racks. She’ll be O.K. when she gets back. Still, God help the policeman who tries to get any sense out of her.’