The Devil's Home on Leave (Factory 2) (21 page)

‘What you haven’t told me,’ I said, ‘was what Hadrill knew. You’ve left a piece out, and I want it.’

‘All right,’ said McGruder, ‘the factory that Pat ripped off, that’s no shoe factory. I learned interrogation techniques in the army, all right? I know just how to work the carrot and stick – the weapon or the kind word, the offer of the smoke that breaks them. Right up to the last second Hadrill thought that what he knew might save him. But I reckoned I’d be better off with his knowledge than a dead man – it might do me some good; knowledge usually does. And it has. The place is a government electronics set-up, and Hawes was paid to rip it off. That is, their share was all the wages – no one to split with. The government was asking for it as usual, I reckon.
Whatever it is they do in there it’s so secret that I imagine they thought well, if we pretend there isn’t any secret, people will think there isn’t one. How daft can you get? What? Locals watching gay white-coated eggheads trying to pass themselves off as operatives on a factory floor? I laughed my head off when Jackie got to that bit. Well, Jackie’s gay if you didn’t know, and he got right into one of these intellectual miracles at the end where his brains aren’t. The two of them liked a piss-up besides; don’t tell me gays don’t like a drink, I know better. Jackie’s sweetheart tried to keep it quiet, of course; but talk gets about in a little place, orgies with little male mysteries Jackie brought up from the Smoke and the rest of it. The only thing I don’t know is the feller’s name; Jackie tried to deal with me over that but I got fed up with him, I was getting a hard on and I was getting pushed for time. Myself, I like to come just as the target goes; what screws it for me is if I come too soon. So I said to Edwardes, bang his mush on the wall, will you, shut him up – so I never did get the boyfriend’s name. He was a high-up, though.’

‘What was taken besides the wages?’

‘Microfilm. Only they didn’t take it, they just refilmed it so that nothing was missing when the law came round, see? Anyway, in the death, when Jackie had got all this out of this poofter of his who’d set it up, he went to see Hawes and asked for his cut – and he wanted a big cut, seeing how the guard got himself topped. So when Hawes told Jackie to get stuffed Jackie went to the law; he had contacts there like you wouldn’t believe. OK, you know the rest – Jackie copped and Hawes drew the bird. The only mistake Hadrill made when he agreed to that meet on the thirteenth was that he thought he was safe, even though he knew the governor of the Nine Foot Drop was Hawes’s brother-in-law.’

McGruder stopped, swallowed a little lager and said: ‘It’s amazing the way folk who ought to know better will stick their necks out for money.’

‘You, for instance.’

‘I never stick mine out.’

‘You stuck it out for fifteen hundred quid to top a grass.’ I added: ‘Why did you risk boiling him away?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said McGruder. ‘We didn’t want any traces, that’s why. It was my idea, I planned it all out.’

‘What about Edwardes?’

McGruder looked into his glass and said gently: ‘He knew too much. You know he was there while Jackie talked. He might have tried to win the race. Also, he was frightened after Hadrill. There was all that publicity, and he bottled out. Mind, I knew he would before that.’

‘You’d better tell me about it.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I don’t know if you get all that information for fifty long ones.’

‘Don’t try and bargain with me,’ I said with sudden fury, ‘or your feet won’t fucking touch.’

‘Don’t you welsh on me!’ screamed McGruder. People near us looked round.

‘Don’t fuck me about,’ I said. ‘No information, no deal.’

‘All right,’ said McGruder when he had calmed down, ‘well, it was a short cut he took across to his flat in SW5. I knew he always took it because he told me he always did. So I waited for him there, on that piece of waste ground behind Olympia where you found him. There was enough cover. It was risky, but in that area people take cover if a cat farts. I didn’t like it, as I say; blowing a man’s head off in central London, even at night – it’s clumsy, it’s careless. Still, I reckoned I was in a fair way to get away with it.’

‘And you might have done,’ I said, ‘if there hadn’t been a link between Hadrill and Edwardes.’

‘I had to do it,’ said McGruder. ‘I told you I started not trusting Merrill while we was doing Jack; that was the main reason I shot him. He could have gone to the law, the linens – I couldn’t take the chance.’

That was the moment the landlord looked at the clock and rang the bell again before coming out from behind the bar. It was a
quarter past eleven, and everyone was leaving. When the landlord saw that McGruder and I didn’t move he made a serious mistake: he dug his hands in his side pockets and strolled over to us. ‘OK, you two,’ he said, ‘move. It’s well after time. Haven’t you got no homes to go to?’

McGruder said: ‘We was just talking about murder in a general way, and I haven’t finished my drink, darling.’

‘I don’t fucking care,’ said the landlord. ‘I’ve had my eye on both of you all evening and you look like a couple of wrongo’s to me.’

‘And you’re dead right,’ said McGruder, ‘but that’s no reason to make a spectacle of yourself. What’s that yellow thing on your pocket there? Someone throw an egg at you?’

The landlord boiled in the face: ‘I’ll let that pass, now drink up, on your bike, fuck off, the two of you, and don’t come back.’

‘When an East Ender like you dresses up,’ McGruder said to him mildly, ‘he usually goes to the right tailor. But you’re an exception, you look a real mess.’

‘Christ,’ said the landlord, buckling his fists, ‘you’re really pushing your luck, you are.’

McGruder just placed the tip of his forefinger on the rim of his glass and moved it gently round and round till the glass rang. ‘You know what that means?’ said McGruder. ‘It means I’m ringing for service, lackey. And what an angry glass it gets if it don’t get any. Understand, cunt?’ He picked the glass up and poised it against the edge of the table, ready to smash it. ‘You ever been bottled?’ he said. ‘Well, my life, I think you need to be, you’ve certainly got no bottle, you’re just piss and wind.’

At last the landlord began to understand.

‘You’ve gone soft down here,’ said McGruder, ‘that’s your trouble.’ The air around him was cold and silent. A fridge hummed, then started making a noise as if it was trying to bugger something. But it seemed far away. Somewhere behind the bar, on the floor, there would be a bell the governor could have trodden on to get help. But that, too, was far away.

‘Well, look,’ said the landlord, ‘now please, gents.’

‘That’s better,’ said McGruder. He picked up his glass and threw the contents in the landlord’s face. ‘You never know who you’re dealing with when you’re serving the public; you can be in a dangerous game there, sweetheart, without even knowing it.’

‘Right, that’s it,’ said the landlord, wringing out his sodden shirt, ‘I’m calling the law.’

‘No need for that,’ I said, ‘I am it.’

‘Well then, fucking do something!’ screamed the landlord.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s go, Billy, that’s enough.’

McGruder grumbled, staring down: ‘Scots and Irish blood don’t mix. They make a terrible mixture.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. Out on the street I could see the man detailed to watch McGruder for the rest of the night pacing around.

‘I don’t like to upset the law,’ said the governor. ‘What about a private drink, the three of us, friendly like?’

‘Go and piss in your sponge-bag, nig-nog,’ said McGruder. He went over to the door, kicked it open and went out. The man waiting for him followed after.

‘What was all that about?’ said the landlord.

‘I’m afraid I can’t explain,’ I said, ‘but you’ll get a new blazer.’

‘It isn’t just the blazer, what about my shirt? There’s a ton’s worth of gear there.’

‘Send the bill over to Poland Street, I’ve said I’m sorry.’

‘I’ve a good mind to make a complaint.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ I said, ‘it won’t get you anywhere.’

I had nightmares again, frightful dreams I dreamed of Dahlia. She was wrapped in her shroud. It was stained with earth; she flew over me with her arms out and touched my head, shaking hers and saying sadly: Oh, Daddy, come to me, Daddy, come quickly. She was bleeding all over again. Where are you, Daddy? she cried. I’ve come to find you for you to kiss me and hold me tight. It’s so cold and lonely there in the graveyard, it’s so dark in my grave.

There were a lot of us in a green uniform. It was long ago; but in the dream it was now. We started to advance down a mountain slope in the face of dirty white bursts of fire from medium cannon parked on the opposite spur. I wasn’t in our army. Men went down everywhere but I kept firing. It was about four o’clock; I had the sun in my eyes. It was a hot summer’s afternoon and a bloody one. I went through a putrid gust of smoke and changed, yet passed through it still as a flame, then came back to myself at last and lay in a strange state of awakening.

I had a stranglehold with both hands on the edge of the mattress; I had dreamed that I looked death straight in the face.

In the morning I went back to the Factory and asked for any news about Hawes.

There wasn’t any. ‘You’d have been contacted quick enough if there had been,’ they said, ‘don’t worry.’

But I was worried. I went up to 205 and dialled Klara McGruder’s number. I had had a horrible idea. There was no answer when I dialled, and that made the idea worse. I rang the Yard and said: ‘Have we anyone watching Klara McGruder?’

They checked and said no – shortage of men. ‘You idiots!’ I shouted. My fear for her made me furious. I got the tube and went over to the Yard. I said to Gordon: ‘I know where Hawes is,’ and when I explained he said: ‘God, wretched woman.’

I said: ‘We’ve got to do something at once.’

‘But what?’ he said. ‘Suppose we assault the place, Hawes’ll be armed in there. He could do anything, he could kill her. Mind,’ he added, ‘it’s my bollock. You said we should put a man on her and we didn’t. Christ, what a balls-up, it’s always the same – not enough men. Well, all we can do is put men on it now; after all, someone’ll have to come out and buy food.’

‘No, don’t bank on it,’ I said, ‘they’re not cretins, they’ll have enough in there to last them a while. Besides, Hawes’ll never let the McGruder woman out. She’s his guarantee and anyhow she knows too much.’

One of his phones rang. ‘This’ll be bad,’ he said, picking it up, ‘this phone always is.’ He listened, hung up and said: ‘Yes, well, that’s it, it couldn’t be worse, the man who’s been following McGruder’s gone and lost him at a double-entrance pub in Piccadilly.’

‘Well, get an alert out,’ I said, ‘Met, City, chief constables, the lot, he’s got to be found.’

When that had been done Gordon said: ‘Well, now there’s Bartlett, the defence minister.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and he’s the haemorrhoid in the fucking imperial arse, because if it hadn’t been for the death threat to Bartlett, and the necessity of finding out what was behind it, I’d have had McGruder banged up already. Hawes would never have made his jail break, and the woman wouldn’t be in danger now.’

‘It’s quite pointless indulging in self-pity,’ said Gordon, ‘we’ve made a balls-up and we’ve got to pick up the bits. Now look – I’m going to tell you something about Bartlett that no one outside the Branch is supposed to know. We’ve got our eye on him. There’s nothing positive, but we have had for some time.’

‘Oh, come on,’ I said, ‘stop hedging.’ That was the Branch – getting them to say anything, even to a copper, was like questioning a criminal; to get at the truth was like tearing the page off a stiff calendar. ‘Positive or not,’ I said, ‘you must have a reason.’

‘More a suspicion.’

‘Well, let me tell you this,’ I said. ‘I might just as well sock it to you, although it’s your job to know. Like it or not, Hawes has definitely been working for the Soviet Union, I got that from McGruder. A lot of microfilm was snapped at that factory during the raid. I don’t know just what those people are really doing up there, but I do know they aren’t making shoes. Hadrill knew it too. And why snap film if it’s not classified? And where would classified microfilm be going except to the USSR?’

‘OK, OK,’ said Gordon wearily. ‘Why shouldn’t you know it all, you’re in so deep now? What those people are doing up there is designing and building the software for the President 2 missile. It was supposed to be an all-American job, but then they found that this man of ours, Phillips, was better at it than anyone they’d got in the States, for once.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the Russians have got the film now anyway; how much damage has it done?’

‘Enough to put us back five years; the Americans are thrilled, I don’t think; we had to tell them.’

‘Let’s stick to the criminal angle,’ I said. ‘Just where does the minister come into this?’

‘Money,’ said Gordon, ‘he gambles. Mostly at a very select club for big punters, the Rio de Janeiro in Bruton Street. In a private room. Not many folk, but a lot of money. Right now he owes them somewhere around two hundred thousand. Politicians seldom make good gamblers,’ he added with a wan smile, ‘that’s over-confidence for you. Anyway, that put us onto him, when we found out he was owing – we put a croupier in, also a bird to see if she could chat him into telling her where the money was coming from. It didn’t work,’ he added. ‘She got him to bed but all he did was talk about himself.’

‘That’s the trouble with politicians,’ I said.

‘Still,’ said Gordon, ‘He does like the girlies. He gets them to do all kinds of funny things to him, and that costs him as well.’ He slid a drawer of his desk open and showed me some pix. I had seen it all before while I was on the Vice Squad, only more often with a lorry driver goggling underneath in his socks and wristwatch, not a minister.

‘Fancy,’ I said, ‘a minister of the Crown having things like that done to him. Look at this one where he’s being dragged around by his cock.’ I added: ‘How far does all this go back?’