The Shepherd File (3 page)

‘The defence people would tell you.’ Scott Elliot looked at his watch. ‘It is not my department’s responsibility.’

‘Have you any views that might be helpful?’

‘Views, Superintendent?’

‘On that — or anything.’

Scott Elliot grimaced. ‘It’s an unsavoury case. So far as I am concerned Shepherd ceased to be attached to the Foreign Office when he came home without leave. It is a matter for MI5 as far as I’m concerned. Lamb must be responsible for the behaviour of his staff. I shall deal with the matter in so far as the Foreign Office is affected. I have already put in a report to the Minister.’

‘May I see it?’

‘It is purely a Foreign Office matter.’

‘The information may be of help.’

‘It can be of no help to the police.’

Morrison raised his eyebrows. He looked at Holmes. There was an uncomfortable pause. Scott Elliot ignored Morrison. He spoke to Holmes:

‘If you feel that in this case the police should see confidential Foreign Office reports then it will be for you to decide.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘If there are no more questions — ’

Holmes gave Morrison a discreet nod. It was no good antagonizing Scott Elliot more than was necessary at an early stage in the investigation. Obviously there were more questions; but they could wait. Scott Elliot stood up. He was now able to say goodbye cordially to Morrison. ‘If there is anything else I can do for you, Superintendent, please do not hesitate to ask.’ Morrison said thanks and it was not until the door had closed on the Foreign Office man that he could relieve his feelings.

‘Pompous devil!’

Holmes sighed. The case was going to be crowded with antagonisms, with departmental jealousies, with personal hates.

Colonel Lamb arrived, late. Lamb was a blunt soldier, or liked to think of himself as one. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, brightly, as soon as he realized Scott Elliot was not there. ‘Sorry we’re late,’ he said. He hung his rolled umbrella from the filing cabinet and put his bowler hat on top. Lamb had a soldier’s face, weather-beaten and crisp, with fine lines but no superfluous flesh. He affected steel-rimmed glasses which he sometimes wore and sometimes didn’t and there was a sparse scrub of sandy-grey hairs, very thin and very short, along the whole extent of his upper lip. The hair was cut so close that there were times when one wondered whether it was intended to be a moustache or if he had merely not bothered to shave his lip for a day to see how a moustache would look. He had bright blue piercing eyes, wide and shining, almost childlike eyes, long-distance marksman’s eyes; like Morrison he smoked a pipe, but, unlike Morrison’s, Lamb’s pipes were always in splendid condition, groomed and neat, like his grey suits and his shining black shoes, his close-cropped sandy-grey hair, his Guards’ tie.

Lamb was followed into the room by a large round man in crumpled tweed, an amiable rolling type of person, a round button of a man, who seemed, in contrast to Lamb, to be permanently untidy. Parts of his suit fitted and other parts did not. His soft collar gaped at the neck. It was too large. His thick-knotted cashmere tie was too loose. His grey hair was too long, and curled behind his ears. The stains on his coat and trousers were too deeply ingrained into the cloth ever to be removed. This was Pendlebury, the scientist.

‘Anyone else to come?’ said Lamb, cheerfully. ‘Hullo, Joe,’ he said, seeing Morrison. ‘Thanks for the telegram. Nasty business.’ Lamb introduced Pendlebury to the Superintendent. ‘Pendlebury knows all about it. Or at least he knows all about some of it.’

‘Hullo, Lamb,’ said Holmes.

‘I’ve been having a row,’ Lamb announced brightly, ‘with Scott Elliot.’

‘I know,’ said Holmes.

‘How do you know?’ exclaimed the astonished Lamb. ‘Did he tell you?’

‘No, he didn’t, but I know.’

‘The trouble with you,’ said Lamb, ‘is you know too much.’

They sat round the table. Morrison went briefly over the facts. Lamb added a few missing details. ‘The Foreign Office fell down on the North African job,’ Lamb said. ‘Made a balls of it. Lost a man on it. Got killed. Anyway he vanished. Never saw him again. Lost in a jellabi, or whatever they are.’ Everyone looked puzzled. Lamb did not stop for them to ask questions. ‘One of those things. Lawrence of Arabia. The Arabs wear them. Anyway, they lost a man. So they asked me for a good one. They got a good one. Shepherd was tough. Damned tough. And clever. He got what they wanted in a couple of months. But did they like him for it? No. He showed them up too much. Shepherd — ’ said Lamb ‘ — was a good boy, a very good boy. He didn’t have to wear jellabis.’

Morrison looked surprised. ‘Then you don’t think Shepherd might have betrayed secrets to the Russians?’

‘Oh, that!’ said Lamb. ‘I was talking about his mission. That was highly successful. But afterwards — ’ Lamb grimaced. ‘That wasn’t so good. Poor chap blotted his copybook. Usual story, I suppose, got tied up with this Russian woman. His wife doesn’t think so — ’

‘His wife!’ exclaimed Holmes. He stared at Lamb with horror. So did Morrison, who appeared to be momentarily speechless.

‘I’ve just come back from seeing her,’ said Lamb. Their expressions registered. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, aggrieved. ‘Do you mean you think I shouldn’t have gone to see her?’

‘Well — ’ began Morrison, still surprised, but not wishing to hurt Lamb’s feelings.

‘Nonsense,’ said Lamb. ‘I know the police would break the news. But that is pretty brutal. Knock on the door. Madam, I regret to tell you your husband has just been dragged out of the Thames. Not the sort of thing the department would like to happen to anyone, not the wife of a man like Shepherd.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Dammit,’ said Lamb. ‘I had to comfort the poor girl. She was completely knocked out by it. They have a small boy. About five. Tragedy, of course. They’ve just got a bungalow, near Bray. Pretty place. Pretty girl, too. But whether Shepherd was happy with her I don’t know.’ Lamb frowned and shook his head. ‘She was a foreigner.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ asked Holmes, sounding for the moment slightly irritated.

‘Eh?’ Lamb looked surprised. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you know. She was young. He was away a lot. She was a dancer. In a nightclub. In Brussels. He met her there, married her, and brought her back. She’s been vetted, of course. Perfectly sound. Nothing against her.’

‘What exactly did you tell her?’ asked Morrison.

‘Not a very great deal,’ said Lamb. ‘I had to find out whether she knew anything about his job. She didn’t. So I had to tell her.’

‘Why?’

‘Dammit,’ said Lamb. ‘She had to be prepared. Dammit. I told her there would have to be an enquiry. I told her things looked pretty black but that she wasn’t to worry because the department was right behind her.’ Lamb was moved. ‘Poor girl,’ he said. ‘Terribly sad.’

‘Yes,’ said Holmes. He hoped Lamb hadn’t done or said anything too awful. He was afraid he had. Holmes looked at Morrison and was aware that Morrison was feeling the same. ‘We had to tell her,’ said Lamb. He was aware of, but could not understand, their reservations. ‘I told her she ought to get her relatives over. I cabled her family for her. Got to rally round and do something. That’s common sense, isn’t it?’

Morrison changed the subject. ‘Shepherd didn’t get on very well with the Foreign Office, did he?’

‘Who does?’ said Lamb, gloomily.

‘Scott Elliot thought he might be a security risk.’

‘That fool,’ said Lamb. ‘There was no evidence at all of Shepherd being a security risk. Look at his personal file. The man had a brilliant record. Nothing wrong at all. Any woman,’ said Lamb bitterly, ‘can seduce a man if she makes up her mind to it.’

‘Meaning that’s what Nina Lydoevna did?’

‘It looks like it, doesn’t it?’

Morrison consulted his notes. ‘Shepherd was thirty-five,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘His wife is — what?’

‘Thirtyish,’ said Lamb.

‘And Nina Lydoevna?’

‘Fortyish,’ Lamb shrugged. ‘Ages don’t matter much if it’s sexual blackmail. Maybe he went to a party and got drunk and — ’

‘Have you any evidence of this?’

‘No evidence,’ said Lamb. ‘I was thinking aloud.’

Why did Shepherd come home from Africa?’

‘That’s what I don’t understand,’ said Lamb. ‘I suspect he got fed up with the Foreign Office belly-aching and just threw in his hand and came home.’

‘Would he do that?’

‘He was difficult if you didn’t handle him properly; and of course those fools in the Foreign Office started sending out memos about his expenses. Imagine!’ Morrison sighed.

They were getting a very different picture of Shepherd now. It was to be expected. Lamb would back his own men.

‘About this chemical factory,’ said Morrison. ‘I’m not quite sure how important Shepherd’s mission was.’

‘Espionage these days,’ said Lamb, ‘is practically all chemicals.’ He resented it. ‘This isn’t my pigeon. This is Pendlebury’s.’

‘Eh?’ Pendlebury opened his eyes. ‘What is? Oh, the factory. Yes. Of course. You want to know about that.’

‘How important?’ asked Morrison, ‘was the information which Shepherd sent back?’

He knew it would be difficult to get an answer. He hardly expected to get one. Pendlebury would probably refer him to someone else. Morrison had got used to the working of the departments. But at least he could try. There was the advantage that Pendlebury was a scientist more than a civil servant. Even so, Morrison was surprised when Pendlebury said:

‘It was most important.’

They found themselves bending forward. In spite of the casual manner, the vagueness, the untidiness, Pendlebury was impressive. He took a long time to speak, choosing his words with care.

‘The Foreign Office sent Shepherd’s report to me first of all, asking for my comments. I didn’t know of course at the time that it came from Shepherd. I only know now that Lamb has told me. At the time I didn’t know where it had come from. The Foreign Office asked for an opinion. I sent the memo back to them saying that if the report was correct then it was of great importance, but that I doubted whether it was and would they check.’

‘Why did you doubt that?’

‘The size of the place, for one thing.’

‘It was very big?’

‘It was very big and it was producing fairly — shall we say? — rare compounds.’

‘Such as?’

‘Ergot derivatives of lysergic acid.’

‘Come again,’ said Morrison. ‘Put it in black and white.’

‘Rare drugs,’ said Pendlebury.

‘Used for what?’

‘That’s the point,’ said Pendlebury. He obviously found this difficult. ‘It all depends. In small quantities some of them are used for psycho-chemical research.’

‘What's psycho-chemical?'

‘Finding out how the human brain works.’

‘They'd better come and ask the police,’ said Morrison. ‘That's not why it's important, is it?'

‘No, but then there's a commercial use for some of these compounds. One in particular has had a lot of publicity. You've heard of LSD?

‘Ah,’ said Morrison. ‘So there'd be a black market for them?'

‘Indeed a black market,’ said Pendlebury. ‘At the moment these compounds are only produced, so far as we know, in three countries — Switzerland, where they were first discovered, Russia, and America. The market is controlled; and not only for social reasons.’

‘What other reasons are there?'

‘Quite apart from its use as a drug, LSD might be used as a weapon in chemical warfare.’

‘Oh, might it?' said Morrison. ‘That’s interesting. I hadn't heard of that side of it. Has it got any other name apart from LSD?'

‘D-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate.’

Morrison looked and Pendlebury grinned. ‘It is,’ Pendlebury admitted, ‘a bit of a mouthful.’

‘Would you mind writing it down for me?'.

‘Not at all.' Pendlebury wrote it down in a blank page of Morrison's notebook, handed it back, and Morrison looked at it suspiciously.

‘The most concentrated drug ever produced,’ said Pendlebury.

‘Concentrated?’

‘In its pure form a few microscopic grains on the point of a pin would be enough to dope you for hours.'

‘To dope — ?'

To give you hallucinations.’

That's not the stuff on the market?’

‘No, I’m talking about the factory product.'

‘And in chemical warfare?'

‘It's on the list of what we call population weapons.'

‘How do you mean?’

‘There are a number of drugs that could be used but LSD is so much stronger that it is not really comparable. It has quite unique properties. It is, for example, so strong that only a pound or so in London's water supply would affect about eight million people.'

‘A pound or so?'

‘Properly distributed that would give faint hallucinations to about eight million people. I merely mention that to show you that there is no real need to produce very much of it. According to Shepherd's report he said this factory was producing LSD in large quantities. It all depends on what you mean by large. That is why I said the report should be checked.'