Petrella at 'Q' (20 page)

“And if he isn’t there?” said Blencowe.

“I’d like to know that, as soon as possible.”

There was something else at the back of his mind. It was connected with the bunch of keys. Something which might be important. It was no good trying to force it. Either he would think of it, or he wouldn’t.

Manfred looked at his watch, and said, “Five past eleven. He isn’t often late on a time call.”

“He may have been held up,” said Samuel. “Any news of that girl?”

“Nothing but good news. She hasn’t been out of the house this morning.”

“She might have been talking on the telephone.”

“She might have been,” said Manfred.
“If
the house was on the phone, which it isn’t. I told you you were worrying about nothing.”

“I don’t worry about nothing,” said Samuel. “What I worry about is things I can’t understand.”

“Such as—?”

“Such as what happened yesterday evening. I had a word with young Mason. He was driving the car and he got out to help his brother. He was a bit more honest than Chris. It wasn’t five or six Paddies. It was just three of them.”

“Three?”

“That’s what he said.”

“And they walked away from them. Why?”

“What he said was, he thought his brother was right to pull out. He said, suppose we’d started something, and the police had turned up and we’d all been pulled in, who was going to handle the job today?”

“Justifiable.”

“Justifiable,” agreed Samuel. “But quite untypical. Those boys hit first and think afterwards.”

“You’ve got some idea in your head about it,” said Manfred patiently. “Let’s have it.”

“People like the Masons, who live by violence, get a sort of instinct about the opposition. Either it’s amateur or it’s professional. If it’s amateur, they go in happily and knock hell out of it. If it’s professional, they think twice.”

Manfred was about to say something when the telephone rang. He said, “That’ll be Adams. And about time too.”

It wasn’t Adams. A woman’s voice said, “Is that the Water Board?”

“I’m afraid you have the wrong number,” said Manfred.

The woman was still apologising when he rang off.

“He’s gone,” said Blencowe. “Packed up late last night and pulled out. It’s one of those old houses, carved up into flats. The sort of place where everyone knows what everyone else is doing. The old codger on the second floor says he heard him arrive about eleven o’clock, by taxi. What really interested him was that Adams kept the taxi waiting. For about half an hour, he says, whilst he banged about upstairs. Then he came out, with a suitcase in either hand, climbed into the taxi and drove off. The lady on the first floor heard him, too. He woke her child up when he slammed the front door. She was very cross about it.”

“I don’t suppose, by any chance,” said Petrella, “that anyone heard where he told the taxi to go to.”

“Certainly they did. They all had their windows open by that time. He told him to go to Victoria.”

Petrella said, “I think we’ve got enough to put out an all-Stations call.”

“Could be out of the country by now.”

“I don’t think so,” said Petrella. “He wouldn’t find a boat train at that time of night. I think Victoria was bluff. He’s gone to earth somewhere.”

He rang through to Division, found Watterson there, and explained what had happened. Watterson listened carefully and then said, “If that solicitor is prepared to say that there was normally a very substantial amount of cash kept in that safe, of which Adams had the only other key, and if he’s disappeared and the safe’s empty, we should be able to justify a general call. They have to alert the various exit points as well. It’s quite an elaborate operation. I’ll get the wheels turning.”

Petrella put down the telephone and started to work out timings. Adams had decided to quit, no doubt, because he saw himself going the same way as Bernie Nicholls and old Mr. Lloyd. He had grabbed whatever money was in the safe and left his flat. So far, so good. But what had happened next?

There was no train with a cross-Channel connection after ten o’clock at night. On the other hand, there were night flights from Heathrow. If Adams had made his preparations in advance – and he was the careful sort of man who might well have done so – he could by now be almost anywhere in the world.

It was at this point in his reflections that Petrella’s subconscious got through to him with its message. It might have been some vague connection between “all the countries in the world” and a stamp album he had possessed in his youth, or it might have been simple coincidence. A new stamp book, with one stamp missing. He said to Blencowe, “What time did you leave your flat this morning?”

“Eight o’clock,” said Blencowe.

“Had the post come?”

“Doesn’t arrive till half past eight earliest.”

“Telephone your wife and ask if there’s a letter for you.”

Blencowe looked surprised, but went out to his own room.

He was back in a few minutes and said, “Bang on the nail, Skipper. Local postmark. Timed seven o’clock last night. What’s in it – a bomb?”

“Something of the sort,” said Petrella. “Get hold of it quickly. Take the car.”

They were finishing reading the letter when Watterson arrived. They showed it to him and he read it in silence. It was two sheets of Mr. Lloyd’s office paper covered on both sides with Mr. Lloyd’s cramped handwriting and it contained a full and exact description of the money cleaning activities which he and Adams had been carrying out for the Tillotsons during the past five years. Names, dates, the lot.

Watterson was silent when he had finished reading. Something seemed to be worrying him. Petrella said, “When he wrote that he knew he was for it. And he just bloody well didn’t care.” There was a further moment of silence. Petrella said, “I hope they catch Adams before he gets out of the country.”

Watterson said, “I had to put your request for an all-Stations alert through District. They turned it down.”

Petrella felt himself going red. He said, “Baylis turned it down? What the hell’s he playing at?”

Watterson looked at Blencowe, who removed himself quietly from the room. Then he said, “That’s right. Baylis turned it down personally. Half an hour ago. That’s what I came to tell you.”

“He realised that Adams was most probably leaving the country?”

“He had all the relevant information.”

“And he doesn’t want him stopped?”

Watterson didn’t answer this immediately. He had known Petrella for a long time, and had worked directly with him for nearly a year. He knew him to be a cool and controlled person, persistent where persistence was needed, but not stupidly obstinate. A man who would be guided, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, by reason and not by passion.

But he also knew that Petrella’s father was Spanish, being high up in the Spanish Intelligence Service; and that there was, deep down inside Petrella, normally kept under lock and key, a black Iberian demon. He himself had seen it in action only once. It was a sight he had not forgotten.

Since Petrella seemed to be waiting for an answer to his last question he said, “All I can tell you is that District refused to sanction your request for a general alert and a port watch. And that the refusal came personally from Commander Baylis.”

“No reason given.”

“Not to me.”

Petrella said, “I see.” His voice was controlled again, but it was the control of a fury which was now cold rather than hot. He thought for a moment, and then said, “A short time ago Adams came into this room and offered me a bribe. It was a large bribe and well wrapped up. He said that if I kept my eyes and ears open for possible clients for Lloyd and Lloyd, he would pay me twenty-five pounds a week, with commission on top. He seemed surprised when I turned it down. What he didn’t know was that the whole conversation was taped. You can hear it if you like.”

“I’ll take your word for it. What does it lead to?”

“It leads me to wonder how much he was paying Commander Baylis.”

Watterson said, without any inflection of either surprise or anger in his voice, “The fact that Adams tried to bribe you doesn’t prove that he succeeded in bribing Baylis.”

“It doesn’t prove it,” said Petrella. “But consider the facts. First, he’s got a very expensive wife. You told me so yourself. Second, he personally blocked any further investigation into the affairs of Lloyd and Lloyd. A very respectable firm he called them; you remember?”

“Did you tape that conversation as well?”

“No. But you heard it. And wouldn’t, I imagine, deny it.”

“Go on.”

“Finally he’s stopped us taking the most obvious and elementary steps to catch Adams. Why? There can only be one reason. He doesn’t want him caught. Because if he’s caught, he’ll talk. And now that Lloyd’s dead, Adams is the only person who can incriminate Baylis.”

There was a long silence, in which they heard a car in the street outside run into another car and a furious row start up. Neither man so much as glanced at the window.

At last, Watterson gave a sigh which seemed to let a lot of air out of his lungs. Then he said, “What do you propose to do about it?”

“There’s only one thing we can do. We shall have to go over his head.”

“When you say ‘we’ are you proposing that I should support you?”

“I don’t need your support. I only ask you to forward my request.”

“You realise that you’re putting your own head on the block. Unless you can prove what you’re saying, prove it to the hilt, you’re finished in the police.”

“I don’t think,” said Petrella coldly, “that I should care to remain a member of a force that could let Baylis get away with this sort of thing.”

“Always supposing that you’re right.”

“I’m right,” said Petrella. “And you know that I’m right.”

“What makes you think that?”

“If you hadn’t known I was right, you’d have started shouting the odds long ago.”

Watterson managed a faint smile. He said, “An application to see the top brass normally takes time. But it can be expedited. I’ll see what I can do.”

Petrella walked from Waterloo Station, down York Road, through the deserted forecourt of County Hall and over Westminster Bridge. He found the action of walking useful when he wanted to think.

A message had come through at midday. It simply said that the Assistant Commissioner would see him at ten minutes to three that afternoon. Petrella had spent most of the interval putting the case against Commander Baylis into logical order. In the form of notes, it now covered two sheets of foolscap, neatly folded and slipped into the breast pocket of his coat. He was under no illusions as to what lay ahead. The man he was going to deal with had been a barrister before he became a policeman. He had a coldly logical brain and a tongue which was feared from one end of the Metropolitan Police to the other.

This was the reason for the notes. Not that Petrella had any intention of producing them and reading from them. He had learned them by heart. They were in his pocket as a form of talisman.

As he reached Parliament Square, Big Ben showed twenty minutes to three.

The Tillotsons sat together in Manfred’s drawing-room. It was five minutes since either of them had opened his mouth. Then Manfred said, “You’re still worried about something. Is it that girl?”

“Julie?” said Samuel. “No. I don’t think she can do us any harm now. I was wondering about Adams.”

“If he knows what’s good for him,” said Manfred, “he’ll be out of the country.”

Silence fell again. Samuel looked at his watch and said, “They should be going in now. We’ll hear, one way or another, inside fifteen minutes.”

A moment later, when the bell rang, he instinctively put his hand out for the telephone. Then he realised that it was the door bell.

“Were we expecting visitors?” said Manfred.

“Not to my knowledge,” said Samuel. “I’d better go and see who it is.”

His brother said, “It’s probably the lady who thought we were the Water Board.”

“You’re to go straight up,” said the uniformed Sergeant in reception. “Lift to the second floor. Someone will be waiting for you when you get there.”

Someone turned out to be a girl with a severe hair style and the sort of look which defied anyone to take liberties with her in business hours. He followed her obediently.

The room they went into was a surprise. It was certainly not the Assistant Commissioner’s office. It had more the look of an operations room in an army or air force headquarters. There were two policemen with telephone headsets on. They were seated on high stools in front of a very large plan mounted on a board, and occupying most of one wall. As far as Petrella could see from where he stood, it covered a short length of road and the approaches to some sort of building. It might have been a factory. There were a number of different coloured counters attached to the plan, eight or ten of them were blue, one rather larger one was green and there were three red ones in a row along the bottom. When one of the policemen moved a blue counter, apparently in answer to a telephoned instruction, he saw that they must be magnetised.

There was also a wireless installation, with a loudspeaker, which crackled suddenly and said, “The opposition is arriving. Three small vans, two coming in from the main road on the west. One from the side road on the south-east.”

The policeman moved the three red counters into position.

The Assistant Commissioner, who was seated in a swivel chair at the head of a long bare table said, “No blue car to move until I give the word. The green can come in now to the main entrance and start normal unloading.”

The wireless operator said, “Green move up and unload.”

“Blue four, five and six close up gently to Point ‘A’.”

The men on the board were using both hands now to shift the counters.

It was like the moment in Fighter Command headquarters, thought Petrella, remembering a film he had seen. The moment when all forces were committed.

Two of the three red counters had closed on the green and the other was coming up fast.

“All blue cars move now,” said the Assistant Commissioner; “And the best of luck to all concerned.”