The Devil's Home on Leave (Factory 2) (19 page)

‘Yes, OK,’ I said. I nodded to the others. They packed up and left; it was my bollock. ‘Now,’ I said when they had gone, ‘we’re alone again, isn’t that nice? Now talk. I haven’t got all night.’

‘What are you holding me on?’

‘Committing, or conspiring to commit, a murder.’

He shook his head again; it was a frequent trick with him now. ‘You won’t be holding me long.’

‘You’ve got a bloody nerve, you have,’ I said. ‘You’re right in line for the worst grilling anyone’s ever had at the Factory. I’ve good reason to believe you topped three men, Wetherby, Edwardes and Hadrill, but any one of them will do. You assaulted two police officers this afternoon in the course of their duty, and what with one thing and another, you’re going to look like a blown-out flashbulb by the time we’ve finished with you.’

‘On your bike,’ he sneered. ‘I don’t say I don’t know a few things, but no ordinary sergeant can handle me.’

‘I’ve handled you this far,’ I said, ‘I don’t see any reason to give you up now; you’re like the rest of my bad habits.’

‘No,’ said McGruder, ‘you’re too far down the scale – if I tried to play you as a card you’d make a noise like a mouth organ in a
barrel of water. I need to talk to the bosses, people who can make binding promises.’

‘Well, I truly am sorry I’m only a humble sergeant, Mr Bleeding McGruder,’ I said, ‘but all the same you’re going to have to give me some idea what it is you want to talk about before I wake the bosses up at this time of night.’

He did give me some idea of what he was prepared to say if the conditions were right, and when he had finished I had him taken away.

‘Don’t give him cell 3,’ I said to the constable on duty down there. ‘Try and make the miserable bastard a bit more comfortable than that.’

When everyone had gone I sat drawing monkeys for a while on my ageing notepad. Then I finally did what I knew I had to do, and rang the voice. The time being what it was, though, I had to ring him at home.

‘I don’t know what the Christ I’ve got into here,’ I said, ‘but what I do know is, this is no more a matter for Unexplained Deaths than it is for Almighty God; it’ll have to go over to the Branch.’ I told him what McGruder had just told me.

‘I don’t believe it,’ said the voice. The voice sounded as if it might have had a heavy evening. ‘That’s staggering, it’s quite impossible.’

‘Well, I know McGruder’s cornered,’ I said, ‘and it’s logical to think that he’ll do anything he can to get himself out of the jam. But we can check a lot of it, or at least the Branch can.’

The voice swallowed. I was sorry for it. I had half a mind to call it sir – but how can you say sir to a voice in pyjamas?

‘It would be a bit embarrassing all round if this information turned out to be straight up,’ I said, ‘impossible or not.’

The voice must have thought the same because it said sharply: ‘OK. You stay right where you are; don’t move out of your office until I call you back.’

‘Not even to go to the karzy?’

‘Toilet.’

‘All right, then, toilet.’

‘I’ve heard there’s a method where you can hold it in, sergeant. Mind over matter. No. Not even to go to the toilet.’

The Branch man I had to go and see looked like one of those young majors we sent off to the Falklands who got interviewed on the box. He had two fingers on his left hand missing; he was well turned out, casually relaxed. He looked public school before he had even got his mouth open. Right now, however, he was starting to look less debonair than his turn-out.

‘This is the most extraordinary business I’ve ever heard of,’ he said. His name was Gordon, and we were sitting in his room at the Yard. The Yard again. It was remarkable if I saw the Yard once in five years. This time, counting the board, it was the second time in two days.

‘Surely McGruder’s just putting one over on you to get himself out of his jam,’ said Gordon.

‘That’s what my deputy commander felt,’ I said, ‘but I see he took the trouble to contact you just the same.’

‘Yes, well, because, Christ, if this is true,’ said Gordon, ‘some people could get badly hurt on this one – anything from their kneecaps to their careers. And if it broke in the press, even as a rumour, it could stay on page one of every paper in the land for ever and ever. All right, you know McGruder better than we do. How seriously do you really take it?’

‘Seriously enough to make my call upstairs,’ I said. ‘And McGruder isn’t naive – he knows we can check out most of what he’s said. If we want to,’ I added.

‘That’s the thing,’ said Gordon. He coughed. ‘Look, this is between you and me – it’s embarrassing. It means checking things out that have already been checked out.’

‘Even so,’ I said, ‘if they’ve been checked out wrong for any
reason, the knife could go straight through the cheese.’

‘Good image,’ said Gordon. ‘Jolly good. God knows how many maggots there mightn’t be inside.’

‘Well, don’t let’s get too depressed,’ I said, ‘anyway not yet.’

‘What does McGruder actually know?’ said Gordon.

‘He says he knows what Hadrill knew,’ I said, ‘and what’s more, I believe him, to put it crudely.’

‘We’re all of us used to things being crude.’

‘Well, he maintains he choked everything out of Hadrill before he killed him. Grasses are no heroes. I dare say Hadrill thought that by telling McGruder everything he might save his skin. Christ – anybody might think that. But he didn’t know McGruder. Once primed with money, McGruder’s only a computer who works for himself. Getting to know what Hadrill knew was, well, reinsurance for McGruder in case something went wrong. And something did go wrong. And McGruder is reinsured. McGruder’s a psychopath, but psychopaths are no fools; they wouldn’t be so bloody dangerous if they were.’

‘So he bled Hadrill’s knowledge out of him, then killed him as he’d been paid to.’

‘That’s it. and Edwardes too. Because remember that Edwardes heard everything McGruder heard, and McGruder wasn’t prepared to share it with anyone. That’s villains for you.’

‘At least we’ve got McGruder’s confession – he killed Hadrill.’

‘He’d no choice. He was staring ahead into years of bird. He needed his reinsurance, but to operate it he had to talk – something had to give. Mind, I knew he’d done it the moment I got next to a little grass called Smitty.’

‘It’s what Hadrill did know that’s so bloody worrying,’ said Gordon. ‘This has gone right the way up to the top, and you know where the top is. A wrong move here, and heads are going to roll in a way that’s never been seen here before.’

‘Heads are going to roll even if it’s a right move,’ I said. ‘Fewer though, I suppose.’

There was a depressed silence so I said: ‘Well, what are you going to do about McGruder’s proposition? Do we let him go on running about and then give him a ticket out of the country when this is all over? Or do we bury him?’

‘It’s a diabolical decision,’ said Gordon.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but it’s got to be taken.’ I was tired; I yawned. ‘Anyhow, luckily it’s nothing to do with me.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Gordon. ‘What do you mean, it’s nothing to do with you?’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I want to be taken off this. I’ve done what I was told to do; I’ve got a confession out of McGruder and he’s nailed up at the Factory. But espionage is nothing to do with A14 – we only deal with obscure deaths, the murder of people who are never going to make headlines. But now, what started off as a contract to waste a grass in South London turns out to be page one, and it’s got nothing to do with people like me, nothing to do with Unexplained Deaths at all. McGruder’s bottled up now. Anyone can deal with him.’

‘Well, they’re not going to,’ said Gordon. ‘You are.’

‘I haven’t the rank.’

‘Fuck that,’ said Gordon, ‘you’re co-opted on the Branch for this.’ He picked up a phone. When the number answered he said he had to speak to the Commissioner. He got through and spoke for a long time. When he rang off he said: ‘Well, that’s settled, then.’

I got out of the building thinking, what a stupid thing to happen – I fail a board for the Branch deliberately and then within forty-eight hours I’ve got this on my plate, I’m working for them.

Later in the day I had to go back to the Yard again.

‘The minister of defence has had another note threatening his life,’ said Gordon, ‘and we’re taking it really seriously.’

‘How seriously? You’ve got a watch on him?’

‘You bet, round the clock.’

‘What sort of a note?’

‘Typewritten, on one of those old machines villains junk when they’ve done with them, not realizing they’re a collector’s piece.’

‘McGruder knows something we don’t,’ I said, ‘that’s the thing to remember. He either knows who’s got the contract to kill the minister, if there really is one, or he may have got it himself. Anyway, what I do know is, that thanks to what he choked out of Hadrill, he knows things that we need to know badly, very badly. Meanwhile, we’ve got to get Hawes back; he’s the mainspring in the whole works. You take it from there.’

‘I tell you, we’ve got every copper in the country looking for him.’

‘He must know that too,’ I said, ‘and that’s why, wherever he is, he won’t be going anywhere, unless he tries to get out by private aircraft.’

‘Our best bet is to soak McGruder for every bit of information he’s got,’ said Gordon. ‘But how to do it?’

‘We won’t do it by keeping him slammed up in the Factory,’ I said. ‘The murderous little man fancies himself rotten; he reckons he’s better than all of us put together any day; he’s holding some very strong cards, he thinks.’

‘How strong do you think they are? You know him, we don’t.’

‘It’s a big case,’ I said. ‘But unless anyone loses their nerve here, a quite feeble card well bluffed could just pull the trick.’

‘Christ,’ said Gordon, ‘I’m beginning to read your mind; you’re not seriously suggesting we let McGruder out, are you? Yes, you are.’

‘Well, I was leading up to it, yes. We’d take precautions like a tart of course. He’d be constantly watched; I’d be spending a lot of time with him myself. I’ve got his passport; it’s an Irish one. I’ve turned his place over, but I didn’t find anything else exciting.’

‘Nothing written at all? No names? No addresses?’

‘McGruder’s a man who keeps everything in his head,’ I said.

‘You’re really suggesting we offer this maniac a deal, are you?’
said Gordon. ‘Offer to let him out of the country in exchange for this information?’

‘Well, I don’t see any harm in just offering him something,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t mean to say we necessarily have to give it to him. It’s a question really of deciding on the easiest way of getting to the bottom of this; but whichever way we play it it’s going to be bloody difficult. Just the same, keeping him at the Factory and grilling him is going to make the job downright impossible. He’s a much tougher man than Hawes; McGruder really is hard.’

‘Also, we may not have much time.’

‘Yes, that’s another thing,’ I said. ‘Certainly not enough time to leave Bowman and Co. pounding away at him and getting nowhere. You could grill McGruder for five years if you wanted to, but you still wouldn’t crack him. You’ve got to know exactly where to hit McGruder to make him react, and I know him better than anyone else here does. I’ve also had a long talk with his ex-wife, which he doesn’t know I’ve had. He’s threatened to kill her,’ I added, ‘to go by her own statement. She ought to have protection if we let McGruder out.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Gordon, ‘we haven’t time to worry about her problems. Does he know where she is?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘at least, I don’t know. I can only say that it’s not likely. But McGruder’s a man who can find anybody if he decides he wants to.’ I added: ‘Besides, I gave her my word I’d have her protected if she felt she was in danger.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Gordon. ‘You had no authority.’

‘I don’t care about that,’ I said. ‘I just won’t forgive myself if anything happens to her. After all, if it hadn’t been for her, we’d never have had proof that Hawes and McGruder had dealings over a space of three years – it’s certain now, from what she told me, that McGruder was responsible for the Wetherby murder.’

‘Well, McGruder’ll be watched the whole time if we go ahead with this,’ said Gordon. ‘I don’t see the woman’s in any danger.’

‘There is such a thing as the mark getting lost,’ I said. ‘Losing the man.’

‘Don’t get metaphysical with me,’ said Gordon. ‘Once we start getting into the laws of probability we’ll be sitting on our arses for ever.’

‘Well, police work is four-fifths probability,’ I said, ‘at least, to start with. Anyway, what’s your decision on whether to let McGruder go?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said restlessly, ‘it’s your idea. You’re really in favour of it, are you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I am, because it’s the only alternative to keeping him in the Factory – and grilling him there, the most you might achieve is putting him away for Hadrill or Edwardes. But even that’s not certain; the DPP would have a fit if I went to him with nothing but what we’ve got now. Meantime, down to the minister, you’d be back where you were before. No, further back; because for all we know, long before we’d finished with McGruder, the minister might be dead, whatever’s lying underneath this case might explode; anything could happen. No, I think we’ve got to let McGruder run about the board for a while.’

Gordon thought it over. Finally he said: ‘All right, then, let’s try it. But if anything goes wrong, it’s my head on a platter.’

‘Oh, you’ll get used to that,’ I said. ‘My head’s practically always on one; it’s just waiting for the parsley sauce.’

I rang downstairs: ‘Get McGruder up here to 205.’

When he appeared I said: ‘We’ve come to a decision about you; we’re going to let you out.’ I watched his left hand slide up to his mouth to hide the smile of triumph. I added: ‘But don’t get ideas, there are conditions.’

‘Never mind that for now,’ he said, ‘I’ve got my own conditions. I want a proper deal. I want out of Britain, and I want out with a lot of jack.’