The Old Vengeful (16 page)

“You don’t think so?” Audley seemed to know what didn’t fit, but it evidently didn’t worry him.

“I know so.” Paul caught Elizabeth’s eye, but almost without seeming to see her. “The KGB would never sub-contract an important job to a psycho—not in a thousand years.” He focussed on her suddcnly, “It’s just not their style, damn it!” He swung back to Audlcy. “And with Novikov sitting in his car, trailing Elizabeth? It never
did
fit, David—Novikov careless is bad enough, but Novikov there at all cancels his connection with Oakenshaw.”

Audley shrugged. “Maybe he was watching over his investment to check on the dividend. Who knows?”

Mitchell frowned at him, then at Chief Inspector Andrew. “Is that what you think?”

“What do I think?” Del Andrew finished his drink. “About this Novikov I don’t think, because I don’t know ‘im well enough … an’ the same goes for ‘style’, ‘cause I haven’t been playin’ this game long enough to suss it out. But Oakenshaw would have put his grannie through it if the money was right—that was
his
style … Only, having said all that, it wasn’t Comrade Novikov who put the money up for is—you’re spot on there, Dr Mitchell.”

“Then who was it?” Mitchell brightened.

“It was a right little villain named Danny Kahn—“

“Dinner’s on the table,” said Faith Audley through the doorway. And you still haven’t opened the wine, David—“

Danny Kahn?

The meal, whatever it was like—over-cooked or not—was purgatory for Elizabeth.

Danny Kahn?

HM Frigate
Vengeful
, 36 guns, 975 tons—

A right little villain, Danny Kahn?

Lieutenant Chipperfield, Mr Midshipman Paget, Gunner’s Mate Chard …
Danny Kahn
—?

It was purgatory because, by apparent convention, they didn’t talk shop in front of Faith Audley during the meal—that was plain from the start, from the way Faith controlled the conversations at both ends of the table—

Why should a man she had never met hire another man she had also never met to ransack her home and threaten to do such unthinkable things to her—?

“Peckham, Mrs Audley—“ Del Andrew obstinately refused to call Faith anything but “Mrs Audley”; Elizabeth had become Elizabeth, and although Drs Audley and Mitchell remained Drs Audley and Mitchell Chief Inspector Andrew plainly wasn’t overawed by either of them; but Faith he kept at arm’s-length “—Peckham’s the real world, all the rest is just a figment of my imagination—‘pound note’ country—“

Purgatory.

But in the end it came to an end, although not at all the way she expected.

“Very well.” Faith gathered them all. “Now I’m going to stack the things, and then I’m going to bed. And Elizabeth ought to go to bed too.”

“I’ll help you,” said Elizabeth dutifully, not wanting to help her, but only wanting to hear about Danny Kahn.

“I’m only going to fill the dish-washer, Elizabeth dear. Mrs Clarke will sort things out in the morning—“

“We need Elizabeth,” said Audley. “And in the morning you’re both going to be busy—you too, love.”

“Oh yes?” Faith looked at her husband suspiciously. “How busy, exactly?”

“You’re going to Guildford—or wherever you go to waste my substance—and kit her out for travelling from top to … ah … bottom—clothes, shoes, baggage to put ‘em in, what she’s not wearing—hair—everything, love.” Audley peered at his wife over his spectacles and the candles. “Start at dawn, and Paul will meet you at twelve.”

“He will?” Paul sounded mutinous. “Will he?”

“I can’t possibly do that, David.”

“Cancel your engagements.”

“It’s the time, not the engagements, David. And I go to London for my clothes, anyway.”

“There’s a smart place in Guildford. I’ve seen the bills, by God!” Audley gave a snort. “But don’t worry about the money—Her Majesty will pay—“

“
I
can pay,” snapped Elizabeth.

“Hold on, Elizabeth!” exclaimed Paul Mitchell. “With Novikov on the loose—never mind … never mind anyone else … you’d better think twice about going
anywhere
, damn it!” He swung towards Audley. “And where
is
she going? And come to that—where am
I
going?”

Elizabeth looked at Audley. “Where
am
I going?”

“You’re not going anywhere,” said Paul. “Because nowhere outside this house is safe.”

Audley looked at Elizabeth. “She’ll go where she wants to go— right, Elizabeth?”

“Now you’re being devious, darling,” said his wife disparagingly.

“I hope so, love—that’s what I’m paid to be … But I know if I say there isn’t the slightest danger that will only offend you, even though it’s true … so Aske and Bannen will accompany you tomorrow for the sake of reassurance, if for no other useful purpose, while you make your purchases, until Mitchell arrives to take her from you.”

“And then?” Paul sounded unreassured.

“Then, all being well, you shall both go
Vengeful-researching
somewhere even safer, in so far as that is possible. And you can still keep Aske, if not for protection then as a chaperone.” Audley came back to Elizabeth. “Well, Elizabeth—are you game?”

“Don’t agree,” advised Paul. “He put the same question to me once—“

“And look at you now!” murmured Audley. “But I’m not going to argue with you, Elizabeth. You have a mind of your own, and can make it up for yourself.”

And that was true, thought Elizabeth—true now as it had never been before, even though she was still her father’s daughter … And, in any case, the incentives hadn’t changed.

But
that
, of course, was what David Audley was relying on: he knew his mark better than Faith or Paul did.

She looked from one to the other of them apologetically. “I can’t stay here for ever, can I?” she said. “And I do need some new clothes.”

“No, it doesn’t start with Danny Kahn,” said Del. “It only finishes with him. It starts with our doing-over your place, Elizabeth—what we sniffed out as maybe of interest, after Dr Mitchell had finished with it … which was mostly a lot of junk and dead ends that wasted our time … But there was this quarterly account from this taxi firm in London for journeys right across town—Victoria all the way to Whitechapel, north of the river—regular journeys, costing a small fortune … an’ that was when I first thought ‘aye-aye—something not quite right here’ … so I got on to the firm, an’ they remembered your dad—good customer an’ all that—an’ routed out his regular driver. And after I’d talked to him I dropped everything else, because I’d got this lucky feeling then.” He sipped his port and almost winked at her, she thought. “Whitechapel tube station, that’s where he was let off, an’ picked up an hour later each time. And there’s only three directions you can go from there—like, back where you came from, or on into deepest Essex … Barking, Upminster, Ongar … or you take the line through to New Cross Gate, under the river—which is the oldest tunnel under the Thames, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunei—Rother’ithe, Surrey Docks … all my old stamping grounds when I was a kid, but not the sort of place your dad’d go to, except maybe further on to Greenwich and the Royal Naval College … But he wouldn’t go that way, see?”

“But that’s where he went?” said Paul.

“Sssh!” said Audley.

“An’ that’s where I really started to get lucky—lucky it was me, an’ not someone who didn’t know the area—but lucky first because his driver used to worry about him … nice old gentleman limping along alone, with his stick, down into that tube station, with his little brief-case—“

“Heavy little brief-case,” murmured Paul, looking at Elizabeth.

“So one evening he was late back, an’ the driver went and inquired in the station … and he was told that there’d been a breakdown at Shadwell, which is the back-end of the East End, just before Wapping, where the tube dives under the river, an’ comes up in South London at Rother’ithe. Which meant, of course, that he was doubling back across the river, just as a routine precaution, because he didn’t want anyone to know where he was going—clever, but amateur, like you’d expect. But I
knew
I was on to him then, an’ not wasting my time … Apart from being lucky, that is.”

Elizabeth observed the rapt expression on David Audley’s face, half admiring, half smug, and knew that Chief Inspector Andrew hadn’t been lucky at all; or, if he had been lucky, it had been the deserved luck of the clever man who takes the right path at each intersection out of that rare blend of intelligence and experience and instinct which passed for luck among lesser mortals.

“So … to cut a long story short… I ended up at the Jolly Caulkers pub right opposite Surrey Docks station, on the edge of all that rundown docks area, where there’s a bloke behind the bar I used to be at school with. An’ they know I’m a dick, of course, though I’ve been mostly up Bermondsey, Peckham way, out of Catford divisional nick … but I’m still nearly one of them, all the same. An’ because this is a rush job, I flashed your father’s picture around. An’ someone says for old times’ sake ‘Yeah—I saw ‘im with Lippy once’, an’ I said ‘Lippy who?’, and he says ‘Harry Lippman, what used to fence gear out of Redriff Road—but ‘e’s dead now’… Which was the only reason why he’d even said that much, of course—Redriff Road’s just nearby, little 1920s council flats, just square boxes with iron railings in front— because Lippy was where I couldn’t touch him.”

Sip. “So because it’s still a rush job I went straight to Deptford nick, where I’m known, an’ up to my old mates on the first floor. An’ they knew Lippy all right—‘Harry Lippman, fence’—but they say the guys who really knew him are at Tower Bridge nick … So I went all the way back to Tower Bridge nick, on the edge of the bridge. And there’s a guy there … he says Harry Lippman was the kind of fence they never really wanted to catch. They knew what he was doing— jewellery was his speciality, an’ the more antique the better, but he’d handle any gear that wasn’t too hot…only he wasn’t tough or rough, he didn’t upset people or hurt people—he was of the old school… If he’d have been an obvious nick, they’d have nicked him, but as he was careful an’ they had a lot of worse villains, they didn’t bother with him.” Del smiled suddenly, and looked round the table. “Besides which there was his war service, anyway, in his favour.”

“His war service?” Mitchell leaned sideways towards Del.

“That’s right. Leading Radar Mechanic Lippman, RNVR, with a Mention in Despatches too.” Del turned to Elizabeth. “And that was in the same despatch your father figured in for his medal—Leading Radar Mechanic Lippman of HMS
Vengeful
, that’s who Lippy was … before he went back into the family business and became
Harry Lippman
—
disposer of stolen property
. Or ‘Retired general dealer’, as his death certificate puts it.”

“What did he die of?” said Paul quickly.

“Arterio-sclerosis. In hospital—as natural as you like.” Del shook his head. “It was the next thing I checked—got half the staff out of bed … Nothing for us there. And it was about five, six months gone by.” Back to Elizabeth. “Lippy handled your father’s business right enough—would have been honoured to, by all accounts … very proud of his war service he was—British Legion treasurer, Old Comrades’ Association—picture of his ship and his captain in the sitting room, above his medals in their case … Doing your dad a favour or two would have been right up his street—he had all the contacts, for money or gear, and he was recognised as an honest crook, so no one double-crossed him. In fact, right to the end, if anyone got done down or hurt in Rother’ithe, Lippy had a way of dealing with it … ‘Fact, I reckon they
miss
him in Tower Bridge nick, the way things are down there now.”

Paul turned to Audley. “Not the man to give Novikov the time of day, David.”

“Too right!” Del gave a snort. “Maybe now they’ve got some weirdos on that patch today—young Trotskyites and Revolutionary Workers from outside, where it always used to be dockers who were rock-solid Labour—Ernie-Bevin-Labour … But Novikov would have stood about as much chance as a snowball in hell in the Jolly Caulkers in Lippy’s heyday—he’d have ended up under a barge in the river, most likely. Lippy was on the Murmansk run in ‘44, and he didn’t take a shine to what he saw at the other end, from all accounts.”

“So where does Danny Kahn come in?” said Elizabeth.

“Ah … now Danny Kahn doesn’t come in with Lippy,” Del shook his head. “Lippy wouldn’t have given Danny the time of day on a wet Sunday afternoon, not if he’d have come to him on bended knees . . Danny
wasn
’
t family
, either in the general sense or the specific one, an’ Lippy was a great family man—you can still see that in the street markets, and on a Saturday night, they say, when his daughters go out.”

“His daughters?”

“Yeah—three of ‘em … They like to see their kids looked after, Lippy’s sort … and some of the things he fenced, if they weren’t hot—like if someone from pound-note country wanted to get rid of the family heirlooms on the quiet—he couldn’t bear to get rid of some things so they ended up on his daughters … You go into any South London market, an’ look at the women, an’ you’ll see they’ve got rings on all five fingers of both hands. They don’t really trust banks, those people—they prefer to have their riches about them, on their wives and daughters … It’s one way of looking good, and it’s another way of investing your money away from the bleeding tax-man—mother to daughter, an’ no questions asked … But Danny doesn’t come into any of that… Although, funnily enough, it’s through the family that Danny has got his dirty little hoof into the door—“

“Through the daughters?”

“Naow … Lippy’s daughters wouldn’t look twice at Danny’s sort—they’re married to accountants and solicitors and schoolteachers, all strictly legitimate an’ respectable, even if they are still South London—but he had these two brothers, see … an’ one of them’s okay, in Hatton Gardens, in precious metals—“

“Gold?” inquired Mitchell, almost innocently. “Coins?”

“Yeah. He could handle gold coins easy enough … But the other married a gentile, that’s got this no-account step-son, Ray Tuck— Raymond Darren Tuck, who’s been sucking up to Lippy ever since he found he couldn’t do nothing else, because it was too much like hard work … An’ Ray Tuck’s been running Lippy’s errands—or was, until Lippy snuffed it—an’ now he’s tried to take over Lippy’s operation.”