Authors: Conrad Voss Bark
The Shepherd File
© Conrad Voss Bark 1966
Conrad Voss Bark has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1966 by Victor Gollancz Ltd.
This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
The
Horrible
Case
The body swirled slowly round the backwater; a grey bulge breaking the surface and rolling in the current until it moved to the edge of the eddy. It came to rest against the reeds under the bank. The face, lying uppermost in the water, impressed by long immersion, was the colour of grey felt. The hair drifted about the head like strange river weed.
The small boy, wandering happily along the bank with a jam jar and fishing net saw it as he clambered down to the shallows, stopped and stared. He turned and ran, shaken, screaming for help. Men came and struggled in the soft mud and the thing was lifted and carried away under the bright sun, blind eyes staring, to be examined and cleaned, probed, dissected and discussed, until its journey had ended momentarily here, in the mortuary, under the anonymity of a white sheet.
The room was grey and white. It smelt of disinfectant and fresh paint. The doctors had finished their work and the senior consultant was talking to the police. Their voices were hushed. Three uniformed police and a laboratory assistant were watching with a certain reverence every movement of the plainclothes men from Scotland Yard who were taking a leading part in the discussion. By a side table, laid neatly docketed on a shelf, were the effects, dried, but still showing the marks of water: a suit, shirt, underwear, shoes, a pen, a diary, keys, a wallet, small change, a cigarette carton and a lighter.
‘He's been dead about three days,' the senior consultant was saying to the Scotland Yard men. ‘There's no doubt at all that he was drowned. There’s no marks of violence. I know what you suspect and I've looked everywhere. But there's no question about it. The cause of death was drowning.’
‘He couldn't have been held under water?' suggested one of the Scotland Yard men, a lugubrious individual in his late thirties, Inspector Post.
‘He could have been,' said the consultant, ‘but if he was there's nothing to show how he was held under water. I doubt if it could be done without severe bruising.'
‘And there’s no bruising?'
‘None at all. Not a single mark.'
‘So it’s accidental death?’
‘Looks like it,' said the consultant. ‘Or suicide.' He snapped up his case of instruments. ‘That's for the jury anyway. But as far as I'm concerned it's drowning. We're all agreed on that. There's alcohol in the body. The equivalent of three or four double whiskies. Difficult to say exactly because of the immersion. Couldn't swear to the exact amount at the time of death. But he had been drinking. Just before he died.'
‘He died by drowning after having a lot to drink?’ repeated Inspector Post and looked doubtfully towards the older and broader man standing by his side. ‘Looks pretty clear, sir?'
‘Does it?’
Detective Superintendent Morrison, head of the Special Branch, grunted the words without implying that it was not clear; in fact it seemed all too clear that the dead man had died from drowning and that he had fallen into the river not long after he had had a large amount to drink. It seemed, on the face of it, a fairly clear case. The Thames, at that point, between Staines and Runnymede, ran fast, with nasty eddies and cross currents, and if the man had been drunk enough to fall or jump in, his clothes and the drink he had had and the speed of the river would have been sufficient, taken together, to hamper him enough to prevent him getting out if he had wanted to. Drowning — yes, it was a pretty obvious case of drowning. But in this case, they had to be absolutely sure it was nothing more. Morrison had grunted his displeasure not because he thought there was a doubt but because of other complexities, the explanations that would have to be given, the numerous anxieties and uncertainties that had and would have to be assuaged if it was suicide.
Peter Shepherd, the dead man, had been an agent of MI5.
The other men in the room, apart from Inspector Post, did not know this. The dead man was, to them, a clerk in the Ministry of Defence. He was so described and they took the official description at its face value, as the coroner would and as the Press would if the inquest ever got further than the local weekly newspaper, which was unlikely, because accidental drowning was not uncommon and neither were suicides: the local police might wonder to what extent it could be a suicide case. Fortunately the local police would have no clue that Shepherd had been in MI5 and they accepted the explanation that Morrison and Post were here because Shepherd had had access to classified information. Any case of that kind was within the province of Scotland Yard. Morrison was visualizing all the trouble that the suicide of an MI5 man could cause when Inspector Post had said that he thought it was pretty clear. Morrison did not enthuse about clarity.
‘I suppose there’s not much doubt,’ Morrison conceded, and even as he said that to Post he could have bitten the words from his tongue for committing him to an opinion. Morrison was a Scot; he was exceptionally cautious in his judgement and he had known too many cases which had started out by seeming to be pretty clear only to become abominably complicated. Morrison corrected himself at once. ‘At least,’ he said, ‘the medical evidence is clear. He had drink in him and he drowned.’ Morrison began to fill his pipe, a large and carboned briar, and glared round the room as if defying anyone to go further than that.
The local CID chief nodded sagely at the Superintendent’s caution and wondered if it was not the moment to bring the proceedings to an end. Morrison clearly thought so too. He gave instructions about the disposal of the effects, most of them to be sent to his office, and the diary found in the dead man's pocket to the forensic science laboratory at Mill Hill where the soaked pages would be separated and photographed. Inspector Post swept the deceased's clothing and oddments into a suitcase which he had brought with him and put the diary into a plain brown envelope which he sealed and marked.
That's that, then.' Morrison looked round genially. The atmosphere was heavy with death, the sheeted presence. But Morrison, an old hand, with briskly professional. He attempted to put the rather worried Chief Constable at ease. ‘Sorry to make all this fuss,' Morrison said, apologizing for the trouble. ‘One has to go into these things. Nothing in it mostly. But one never knows. We have to come into it if the man has worked with classified information. But in this case — ' Morrison shrugged. It was nicely done. The implication for everyone in the room was that Morrison's journey had not been worthwhile; that it was all a matter of red tape.
‘We can go ahead with the inquest?' The Chief Constable was looking relieved. Morrison nodded. The Chief Constable hesitated as if uncertain of the next step. ‘Do you wish to give any evidence?'
‘Our enquiries are confidential,’ said Morrison, tactfully. ‘You will go ahead in the usual way?'
‘The usual way?' echoed the Chief Constable. ‘Oh, yes, yes.'
‘Thank you, gentlemen,' said Morrison, still genial, beaming at the room in general. There were murmurs and nods and Morrison made his exit, followed by the dutiful Post.
‘The Chief Constable's an ass,’ said Morrison in the car. ‘Doesn't know his stuff. Never mind. Lots like him. Thank God we don't have to rely on Chief Constables.' He leant back against the cushions amid a cloud of tobacco smoke. ‘The diary is the thing,' he said. ‘Get them to have the photostats quickly.'
‘Funny case,' said Post. ‘Never heard of an MI5 man committing suicide.'
‘They do,’ said Morrison philosophically. ‘They do.’
‘I’ve never heard of one.’
‘You may have now.’
‘You think it was?'
‘It looks like it, doesn’t it?’ said Morrison. ‘It could have been an accident. It depends how much drink he had in him. The doctors are pretty cagey. Don’t blame them. We’ll have to go and see the widow. Get in touch with the station and find out when they’re seeing her. We might go along. Don’t want a crowd. Lamb will want to, I suppose.’
Lamb was head of MI5.
‘Do we know what Shepherd was doing?' asked Post.
‘Not yet.’ Morrison became cautious.
Lamb had not been unduly secretive on the phone. He had sounded anxious. Shepherd, one of his best men, had disappeared while on an investigation, probably in the Windsor area. The search had not been difficult. The day Lamb rang, an unidentified body had been found in the Thames, near Staines. Morrison wired a photograph, got the identification confirmed and had gone down with Inspector Post without delay to make his own enquiries and brief the local CID. Nothing tangible had emerged; nothing alarming either. Morrison sent Lamb a telegram and waited for the results of the autopsy. There now seemed little more to do. He would have to make some tactful enquiries of the widow, a task he did not relish, to establish whether or not a suicide was likely, and then he could pass the whole thing back to Lamb as a fairly clear-cut case. That was what he hopped.
All the same he had a faint sense of foreboding, even then, a feeling that if only he knew what was behind it the case might turn out to be very different. So it was to prove. The first intimations were waiting for him in his office, a large room full of old-fashioned furniture, crammed with books and souvenirs of many trials, a comfortable friendly room, on the third floor of the Scotland Yard building.
In the corner of his blotting pad on his desk was a small visiting card with the address 10 Downing Street and the name W. Holmes. Morrison's heart sank. He picked the card up and on the back was a skilfully executed pencil drawing of a lamb and a shepherd’s crook. Underneath the drawing, also in pencil, were the words:
‘Can I see you?'
Morrison looked at the drawing for some time. He passed the card over to Post without comment. Post also stared in silence. They looked at each other. Morrison grunted. He knocked the dottle out of his pipe into the brass ashtray and looked at his watch. Then he looked at Post again.
‘You were going out tonight, weren't you?'
Post sighed and said gloomily: ‘All right, I'll ring up and put them off.'
‘It may not be necessary,' said Morrison, but he did not say it with any conviction. He looked again at the drawing. The message of the shepherd's crook was plain enough. So was the picture of the lamb. Holmes wanted to see him about both Lamb and Shepherd. The significance obtained by the juxtaposition of the two names with the crook was not pleasant. Morrison found the lines of a nursery rhyme going through his head. Little Bo-Peep had lost her sheep and didn't know where to find them. Morrison added another line. The Shepherd had been found and he'd been underground. Or underwater. It was not a very good line but then he was a policeman and not a poet.
‘The shepherd’s crook,’ mused Morrison. He spoke aloud and Inspector Post suddenly saw the point of the drawing.
‘A crook?’ he said. ‘Was Shepherd a crook? Is that what he means?’
Morrison grunted and reached for a new pipe from the rack on his desk. He rummaged round in a cupboard until he found an unopened tin of tobacco. All this seemed to take time. ‘What he means?' he said, at length. He put the pipe and tobacco in his pocket. He did not continue the sentence. ‘You wait here for a bit,' he said to Post. ‘I’ll give you a ring if it's all right.’
Post smiled. It was a crinkling of only the lower part of his face. Morrison was not particularly sympathetic. He was depressed himself. He had been looking forward to his leave and now there was the prospect of it being delayed almost indefinitely. A case did not reach the level of the man known as Mr Holmes without good reason. Holmes was adviser on security to the Prime Minister but officially he had no title and the private room in which he worked at the side of 10 Downing Street had no number and was not in any list, nor was it approached from the front door.
Morrison crossed Whitehall and went about halfway along Downing Street until he reached the iron gates that led past the Privy Council lawn. He went along a path, entered Treasury Passage, and turned off through a stone corridor. He came to a plain black door on which there was a small brass knocker in the shape of a dolphin, knocked twice with its tail, and waited. There were footsteps inside and the door opened. A blue-uniformed attendant stood there. Morrison showed his pass. It was unnecessary because the attendant had known Morrison for years, but Morrison liked to observe the formalities.
‘Mr Holmes is expecting you, Superintendent.’
Morrison went in over a stone floor and up a flight of three linoleum-covered steps. He knocked at the door.
‘Come in!’ cried a cheerful voice, and Morrison entered. A man in his late thirties rose from an easy chair in which he had been reading and came towards him with outstretched hand.
‘My dear Joe,’ said Holmes, ‘how nice to see you. You got my cryptic card, didn’t you? Yes, of course you did, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. How very nice of you to come over so soon. Just got back and not too tired I hope after having gone through the somewhat mournful formalities? I hate autopsies myself. Necessary but sordid. An unpleasant atmosphere. Some of the things people do to find out what went on in your body are quite revolting. Would you like a small drink or even a large one?’
Morrison said that he would prefer it large and Holmes went over to a cabinet and produced the brand which Morrison preferred to all others, a soft malt whisky from the Highlands. It was typical of Holmes that he probably knew more about Morrison’s tastes than even Inspector Post, who was with him every day. Morrison was conscious of this. He suspected also that Holmes knew more of his weaknesses too. This alert and still youngish man with his charming manners had one of the finest brains Morrison had ever come across. Very little escaped Holmes. He had summarized Morrison’s feeling about autopsies with an intuitive accuracy. Morrison had got used to murders and shootings and even more unpleasant things in his thirty-five years in the force, but the cold and clinical dissection of a dead body was something he had never been able to stomach. He found himself, rather to his astonishment, admitting it now, aloud, without knowing quite why he was doing so.