Little Knell (15 page)

‘In lemps, Inspector?' His excellency sounded amused. ‘Are you sure it's in lemps?'

‘Lemps?'

‘That's the currency here.'

‘No, no, sir. It's just that we know one of the more popular ways of getting illicit funds out of any country is to invent a plausible but totally imaginary set-up somewhere abroad, and send the money there under that pretext.'

Anthony Heber-Hibbs said alertly, ‘I get you, Inspector.'

‘Preferably,' added Sloan, ‘where the imaginary project can reasonably be supposed to have funding from other countries, too.'

‘Like the Lake Ryrie Project…'

‘Exactly.'

‘So that anyone enquiring could be told the money is coming from somewhere else,' mused the ambassador thoughtfully.

‘Preferably from somewhere where the enquirer doesn't have any jurisdiction,' said Sloan tightly. This was a perennial sore point with those who sought to arraign lawbreakers and had to watch them slip through their fingers as a consequence of diplomatic niceties, corrupt regimes, ancient treaties and the fallout from old wars.

‘Well, Inspector,' observed Heber-Hibbs, ‘while I can't actually hear the animals howling from the embassy, I can assure you that they are in the Lake Ryrie compound all right.'

‘Thank you, sir.' Sloan made a note. ‘That means there is one avenue of inquiry that we here needn't pursue any further – which will be a help.'

‘Especially the last few Piddock's Jasper,' Mr Heber-Hibbs informed him.

‘Pardon, sir?'

‘The Kingdom of Lasserta is the only place in the world where Piddock's Jasper still exists. A protected species, of course.'

‘Ah, I understand, sir. A rare breed.'

‘A charming little jungle monkey, which as you may imagine, has to be kept at a considerable distance from the lions. They keep hoping they will breed in captivity here – the Jaspers, not the lions.'

‘Yes, sir, I'm sure. Well, that's all I need to know.' He stopped, struck by a sudden thought. ‘Do you grow opium in Lasserta?'

‘Bless you, no, Inspector.' The ambassador laughed. ‘I'm happy to say that pineapples are our main export crop. As far as I know they are as pure as driven snow. No, perhaps snow isn't the right analogy if your money-laundering has anything to do with drug dealing.'

‘No, sir. I mean, yes.' Detective Inspector Sloan was ready to dismiss pineapples – until he remembered cloves. There had once been a famous attempt to corner the market in cloves and hold the commercial world to ransom. There was no world shortage of pineapples, though, that he knew about. ‘Is anything else grown much in Lasserta?'

‘Oh, yes. Bananas, short and curly but very good, mangoes, and a rather special sweet variety of a Lassertan rhubarb. That sells very well.'

Just in time, Detective Inspector Sloan suppressed an unfortunate reference to a banana republic. Lasserta was, after all, a kingdom.

‘Our commercial attaché would be able to fill you in properly on the trading here, Inspector,' Heber-Hibbs was saying. ‘He'd be your man for that sort of detail, if it's important.'

‘No thank you, sir,' said Sloan. ‘But it's good to hear about a flourishing economy overseas rather than a corrupt one.'

There was a significant pause and then the ambassador said gently, as one instructing the young and innocent, ‘There are some foreign countries, Inspector, where it is accepted that a little corruption is good for trade.'

‘Really, sir?' he said coolly.

‘But rest assured that the exports from here which find their way to your Calleshire are the pick of the crop.'

‘Howard Air Limited?' divined Sloan without too much difficulty.

‘One of the biggest customers for our pineapples and the subsidiary crops, too,' Heber-Hibbs said. ‘And very particular about quality.'

Detective Inspector Sloan said he was glad to hear it.

‘He's the moving spirit behind the Lake Ryrie Project, by the way. Ask him. He'll tell you all about it.'

*   *   *

‘Well, not exactly progress, sir,' said Detective Constable Crosby cautiously when he answered Sloan's summons to his office. ‘More like getting some routine information in.'

‘Such as?'

‘The fingerprint people can't find anything useful on the
cartonnage,
' said Crosby.

‘I wouldn't have supposed that they would,' said Sloan irritably. ‘We're not dealing with amateurs.'

‘And the Scenes of Crime outfit confirm that there are no exterior signs of breaking and entering at Whimbrel House. So whoever's been coming and going's had a key.'

‘Coming and going?' barked Sloan sharply.

‘Yes, sir. Forensic say that what they did find at Whimbrel House…' He turned over the page of his notebook with provocative deliberation.

‘Well?' snapped Sloan. He wasn't going to play games with Crosby, but sorting him out would have to wait a little longer.

‘… were traces of heroin in the kitchen,' finished Crosby with
empressement.

‘They did, did they?' said Sloan, thinking quickly.

‘Especially on the table.'

‘A thieves' kitchen.'

‘Puts a different complexion on things, doesn't it, sir?'

‘I think, Crosby,' said Sloan, applying an even older analogy, ‘we may even have identified a modern den of iniquity.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Though we mustn't forget that both Sid Wetherspoon and Wayne Goddard say that nobody had their key between Tuesday when they first went round there, and Thursday when they arrived with their removal van,' said Sloan. The visit from the removal men must have had some consequences for whoever was using Whimbrel House for nefarious purposes. He would have to work on that later.

‘If you can believe Wayne Goddard, sir, then you can believe anything.'

Detective Inspector Sloan reminded his subordinate that it was every police officer's job not to believe anything, ever, until he or she had hard evidence to prove whatever it was.

‘Yes, sir. They say the key hung on a hook just inside Sid's office,' pressed on Crosby, undeterred by this little homily, ‘with a number of other keys being held for the same reasons.'

‘Labelled, I dare say,' said Sloan bitterly, ‘just to make things easier for anyone who took it. If they did.' What had made things more straightforward for the police was this link between the death of Jill Carter and the drugs scene. It was something much more positive than that one of her employers had a yacht at Kinnisport and went on long sea trips in the Channel.

‘Not exactly labelled, sir,' said Crosby. ‘It was on one of Puckle's usual keyrings. The firm have their own.'

‘I call that advertising,' said Sloan. ‘Now, how have you got on with your forensic genealogy?'

Crosby looked blank.

‘The heirs of Colonel Caversham.'

‘Oh.' His face cleared. He reached for his notebook. ‘The colonel's brother was killed at Dunkirk. His name is on the Staple St James war memorial. He only had one son who was called Gerald…'

‘He who ran off with somebody's daughter?'

Crosby nodded. ‘She was called Sybil.'

‘And they were married.' Sloan was fairly confident about this. The bend sinister would have put any children of this union quite out of the running for the Caversham family money and thus have been of no interest to Messrs Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery, executors and trustees.

‘Yes, sir. The marriage took place in a register office in London. Mr Puckle had got as far as finding that out.'

‘And then?'

‘And then the trail goes a bit cold,' said Crosby. ‘The colonel simply told the solicitors that his nephew had gone abroad.'

‘And?'

‘And what, sir?'

‘And did they have any sons?'

‘That's what no one can find out for sure, sir. All we can establish from all the proper authorities is that someone called Gerald Caversham died, aged seventy-five, last year in India.'

‘Big country, India,' observed Sloan.

‘The solicitors have had agents make inquiries out there but they can't come up with anything positive about the couple having had – er – male issue.'

‘Getting nowhere fast, in fact,' said Sloan.

‘And that is all that anyone can discover at this stage, sir,' said Crosby. ‘Us, too.'

Detective Inspector Sloan slowly digested the implications of this. ‘I can see Puckle's problem as executor over the inheritance of the settled estate.' It was beginning to look as if Jarndyce versus Jarndyce might have nothing on the Executors and Trustees of Caversham deceased versus Caversham living; although the connection, if any, with the use of Whimbrel House for the distribution, storage or usage of heroin eluded him. ‘Not easy.'

‘It could be proved that Gerald and Sybil Caversham had had sons, sir; if they had them, that is,' Crosby put it awkwardly. ‘But not that they hadn't had any, if they hadn't; if you know what I mean.'

‘I think I do,' said Sloan gravely. The constable had made the not irrelevant statement ‘Yes, we have no bananas' sound positively simple and straightforward. ‘And, if they hadn't, and it could be proved that they hadn't, then, failing all others, a man called Peter Caversham scoops the pool.'

‘He lives at Water Lane, Luston, sir. Number three.'

‘Then I think we'd better be on our way there now, Crosby.'

*   *   *

Water Lane, Luston was one of the more insalubrious parts of that unattractive industrial town. It fronted the canal and consisted of a row of small terraced cottages, most of which had been subjected to half-hearted attempts at gentrification since the lock-keepers had moved out. Between them and the edge of the canal was a paved area where once there had been a towpath wide enough for horses. In front of some of the cottages were tubs full of flowering shrubs doing duty as makeshift gardens where there was no soil.

There were no tubs outside number three.

And answer came there none to polite knocking or, after that, to more importunate police knocking. The only response was from the house next door. A woman with hair dyed a fierce mahogany colour put her head round her front door and said if they were from the Social Security they'd be lucky getting him in there to come to the door at this hour of the day.

Detective Inspector Sloan said they weren't exactly from Social Security, although privately sometimes these days he wondered himself. More and more of the jobs that the police had to do now were definitely more social than security.

‘He never opens up until it's dark,' the woman said. ‘And then not always.'

‘Light hurt his eyes, then?' asked Crosby.

She stared at his naivety. ‘Too spaced-out to talk,' said the woman. ‘And if you were to ask me, he doesn't want anyone to see his poor arms. His veins are black and blue.'

‘Up to speed, is he?' asked Crosby.

She gave him another searching look. ‘Gone past speed long ago,' she said tersely.

‘Ah,' murmured Sloan. ‘Like that, is it?'

The woman pointed towards the canal. ‘It's a wonder to me that he hasn't gone in the water over there when he's been like that.'

‘Is he in work?' asked Sloan.

‘Work?' she croaked. ‘That's rich, that is. He hasn't done a hand's turn since he's been here.'

‘And where would he be getting the money from for drugs?' said Detective Inspector Sloan.

She shrugged. ‘Where do any of them get the money?' she asked rhetorically. ‘But they do, somehow, from somewhere. Do anything for it, of course.'

Sloan tried to look ingratiating. ‘Do you happen to have his key by any chance? And his permission to use it, of course,' he added as a belated concession to the proprieties.

‘Key? You don't need a key to get in there. The door's never locked and it's half off its hinges anyway.' She gave a high cackle. ‘And believe you me, there's nothing in there to steal.'

Sloan gave another loud knock on Peter Caversham's door for form's sake and then pushed it gently open. He called out Caversham's name as he and Crosby entered the cottage. The front door gave straight into the main room. Initially, he thought the darkened room – there was an old blanket hooked across the window doing duty as a curtain – was empty, but it wasn't. There was a half-made bed in the corner; and what at first sight looked like a bundle of blankets turned out to be a human form.

The two policemen advanced with care but there was no need. The sallow-faced man lying there, although still breathing shallowly, was totally unresponsive to sound and touch. On the floor beside the bed lay an empty hypodermic syringe, its plunger pushed home as far as it would go.

‘Dead to the wide,' said Crosby.

‘But not dead yet,' said Detective Inspector Sloan. The scene reminded him of nothing so much as the one in the famous painting by the Pre-Raphaelite Henry Wallis of the death of the poet Thomas Chatterton. A police lecturer had once used it to illustrate his talk on fraud and fakes.

Except that Chatterton had been depicted as dead and this man was living – or partly living.

‘Get an ambulance,' he instructed Crosby wearily. ‘We can't leave him here like this.'

Chapter Thirteen

Spotted

‘Well, Sloan,' barked Superintendent Leeyes, ‘everything cut and dried now?'

‘Not quite yet, sir.' Touching base – when that base was the police station at Berebury – was never an entirely unmitigated blessing. He took a deep breath and said, ‘But we're working on it.'

‘Good, good. Then, when you've cleared up the murder of this girl, you can get back to dealing with that heroin consignment.'

‘It may not be as simple as that, sir.' He explained that they now knew that Whimbrel House was part of the drug scene.