The Body Politic (5 page)

“Sugging,” said Superintendent Leeyes firmly, “sounds more like Martapan than Clapham to me.”

“It isn't, sir,” insisted Sloan. “It's going about with a clipboard and a questionnaire pretending you're doing a survey and then, when you've got the person's name and address, trying to sell them something.”

Leeyes scowled. “Having craftily found out first whether they can afford it.”

“And if they're the sort of person likely to be in the market for that particular item,” said Sloan. “Yes.”

“Clever stuff,” pronounced Leeyes. It was the ultimate accolade.

“I'll see to this woman,” Sloan promised. “Now, sir, about this hollow pellet that Tod Morton—er—retrieved from some ashes.” He explained what had been discovered in the cremated remains of Alan Ottershaw of Mellamby.

“Ottershaw, did you say?” grunted Leeyes. “Never heard of him. Anything known?”

“Not in the police sense,” said Sloan cautiously, adding, “yet.”

“And what, pray, is that supposed to mean?” enquired the Superintendent at his most Churchillian.

“I did a bit of asking about over at Mellamby where he came from, sir.”

Leeyes frowned. “Who is our man there at the moment?”

“Constable Turton. He covers all the villages out that way.”

“He's young, isn't he?”

“Yes, sir.” The Superintendent had reached an age when youth had become an indictment in itself.

“Go on, Sloan. Tell me he's keen as well.”

“He told me, sir,” said Detective Inspector Sloan with quite a different emphasis, “that Alan Ottershaw had come home unexpectedly from the Middle East because of some trouble out there.”

“There's always some trouble out there,” declared Leeyes profoundly. “You've only got to look at yesterday's newspaper or in the Old Testament. Take your pick.”

“Yesterday's newspaper?” said Sloan, wondering if he'd missed something he should have seen. “Was there a——”

“It's always the same,” said Leeyes loftily. “‘Trouble in the Middle East'.”

“Quite so,” said Sloan, deciding that the Superintendent was taking the broad historical view: Leviticus to Mossadeq—if not later—so to speak. “Actually, this chap Ottershaw had just come back from Lasserta.”

“Lasserta?” Superintendent Leeyes cocked his head alertly. “That's where we get our queremitte from, isn't it?”

Sloan gave an inward sigh. The Superintendent's knowledge was as quixotic as his ignorance. Both were quite unpredictable. There was no more reason why he shouldn't have known about sugging than that he did know about the ore from which queremitte was extracted.

“Can't do without queremitte,” pronounced Leeyes briskly. “The Defence people need it for one of their fancy new weapons, don't they? Stands very high temperatures or something when it's put with something else.”

“Yes, sir.” Sloan nodded. “I don't know the fine detail but I'm told that it's a synergic agent absolutely essential for one whole range of weaponry.” He gave a wry smile. “And I can confirm that it stands very high temperatures.”

Leeyes grunted. “And has this got anything to do with the—er—deceased?”

“I don't know, sir. All I know is that a very small hollow pellet was included in the urn containing his cremated remains, which were to be delivered to his widow for interment.”

“Not a lot to go on, Sloan, is it?”

“No, sir.” He coughed. “And when the undertaker enquired what the cause of death had been—”

“The official cause of death,” interjected Superintendent Leeyes cynically. His view of the medical profession was decidedly less than reverential.

“The official cause of death,” amended Sloan, “the undertaker was told that it was thought to have been due to heart failure and certified accordingly.”

Leeyes grunted.

Sloan hurried on. “The only complaint by anyone so far, sir, seems to have been about the length of time the ambulance took to get out of Mellamby.”

“Busy with Inspector Harpe's Sunday afternoon smash-ups, were they?” suggested Leeyes pleasantly. Inspector Harpe was in charge of Traffic Division at Berebury, and that meant that road accidents were his pigeon.

“The ambulance people had had a rush turn-out the day before to the same place,” said Sloan. “In response to some cock-and-bull story about the Member of Parliament having had a heart attack after a load of hassle with a heckler.”

Leeyes made an enigmatic sound that could have meant anything.

“They chalked it up as a false alarm, malicious intent,” said Sloan, “but, human nature being what it is, I daresay they didn't hurry the second time.” They knew quite a lot at the police station about human nature being what it was.

“For the real thing?”

“According to Tod Morton, sir, yes.” Sloan saw no reason to mention Fred Tompkins, the hospital porter. “I haven't seen the death certificate myself yet.”

“But all of this was before this—er—alleged pellet was found?” Nobody had ever been able to say that Superintendent Leeyes hadn't got a clear eye for essentials.

“Yes, sir.”

“Ahah.”

“The doctors don't know about the pellet yet, sir.” Sloan cleared his throat and explained conscientiously, “Of course, a heart attack may well have killed him as they say it did. We don't know.”

“Are you trying to tell me, Sloan,” grated Leeyes, “and not very clearly, if I may say so, that there was no post-mortem examination of the deceased?”

“I am, sir.”

Leeyes grimaced. “So when you said you hadn't got a lot to go on, Sloan, you meant it literally?”

“I did.”

“H'm,” said Leeyes. His professional relationship with Dr. Dabbe, the consultant pathologist to the Berebury and District Hospital Management Group, was a stormy one to say the least, but the Superintendent always took due note of the doctor's post-mortem findings with the grudging respect of one specialist to another.

“Just this pellet, sir, that's all. And,” he reminded his superior officer, “there may well be a perfectly innocent explanation for its having been in Ottershaw's body in the first place.”

“I daresay,” growled Leeyes, “that any defence counsel you care to mention could come up with six before breakfast, but that hasn't got anything to do with it, Sloan, has it?”

“No, sir.” Detective Inspector Sloan assented to this promptly. What the Superintendent had said was perfectly true: if there was even one possible explanation that was not an innocent one, then the police had a duty to explore it. “I'm afraid that this pellet is all there is at the moment.”

“What about the cremated remains?” As always the Superintendent's view was a literal one. “You've got them, haven't you?”

“Mortons, the undertakers, have them,” replied Detective Inspector Sloan carefully. “I'm not quite sure what our legal standing is with regard to the ashes at this precise juncture.”

“Stop talking like a solicitor, Sloan, and get on with it.”

“But I do know that the undertakers haven't actually despatched them to the family yet. Young Tod Morton promised to hang on to them for a bit.”

“That's something, I suppose,” allowed Leeyes.

“But they will have to hand them over to the family fairly shortly, sir, unless …” He let the rest of the sentence trail away unfinished.

“What is their ultimate destination?” demanded the Superintendent. “Does young Morton know that?” He scowled. “Is the widow going to keep them on the mantelpiece in her egg-timer or anything silly like that?”

“I understand, sir,” rejoined Sloan, “that there is a small area of churchyard outside the east window of St. Martin's Church at Mellamby reserved solely for the interment of ashes.”

“Hrrrrrrmph.”

Sloan hurried on. “Tod Morton tells me that Mrs. Ottershaw had asked him to arrange for her husband's ashes to be placed there in—er—due course.”

“Mine,” said the Superintendent unexpectedly, “are going to be scattered over the Berebury Golf Course.”

“Really, sir?” Sloan managed to keep his face straight with difficulty.

“The eighteenth fairway,” said Leeyes.

And Sloan managed to refrain from saying that it was more the date of the ceremony than the last resting place of his ashes that would interest the Superintendent's underlings at Berebury Police Station.

“Just where a good second wood shot from the tee reaches,” amplified Leeyes, “with a following wind, of course.”

“Naturally,” concurred Sloan. Presumably a good following wind came in handy when ashes were scattered, too.

“It's a very tricky approach to the green from there, Sloan.”

“Talking of tricky approaches, sir——” Sloan tried to seize his moment.

“And I never seem to quite get the distance.”

“—I think we ought to be on the safe side, sir, and——”

“It's too far for a number seven iron.”

“—talk to the Coroner,” persisted Sloan. “Just in case.”

“And too near for a number five.”

“What about a number six?” suggested Sloan involuntarily—and immediately regretted doing so. When Queen Victoria had complained about the number of sparrows in the Crystal Palace, the Duke of Wellington had said, “Try sparrowhawks, ma'am,” but then he had won the Battle of Waterloo and he was Prime Minister at the time. Police Superintendent Leeyes might not feel the same way about being advised by one of his detective inspectors.

Especially by someone who did not even play golf.

Which, as Sloan understood it, meant that he was not so much off the green as beyond the orange pale.

“Never carry a number six iron,” retorted Leeyes speedily. “Of course you must talk to the Coroner, Sloan.”

“Yes, sir.”

“After you've found out how long this pellet had been in the body.”

“Naturally, sir.”

“If you can.”

“Of course, sir.”

“If it was while the deceased had been playing Cops and Robbers at the age of twelve or had a friend learning to use an air rifle at fourteen, then I don't think we need be too interested.”

“No, sir.”

“But if it was the week before he died, we are.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You'll have to talk to the metal specialists first.”

“Yes, sir. I've already asked Sergeant Gelven to find out when queremitte was first mined and so forth.”

“Gelven?” Superintendent Leeyes jerked his head up. “You can't have Sergeant Gelven. They're short on the detective side this week over at Calleford and they need a good man. He's reporting there first thing in the morning.”

“I see, sir. Sorry, sir, I didn't know.”

“You'll have to make do with Crosby.”

“Yes, sir.” Detective Inspector Sloan sighed. “I'm afraid the investigation may take a little longer then. I don't think Crosby has had any experience with either ballistics or heavy metals.”

Detective Constable W. E. Crosby was the newest member of the Criminal Investigation Department at Berebury Police Station—and the most jejune.

“Then it's high time he learned,” responded Leeyes instantly. “And,” he added, “not only are there men in the Force who know everything about bullets in every shape and form, but my painful experience is that they'll all be dying to tell him. Take my advice, Sloan, and don't let them start talking to you about trajectories, or you'll never get your tea.”

Nowadays news travels round the world with something approximating more to the speed of light than that of sound and, in the global village that the world has in consequence become, very little remains secret for long.

The first intelligence to reach the Sheikhdom of Lasserta from London did so very quickly indeed. It arrived well within the deadline set by Sheikh Ben Hajal Kisra for the sequestration of the Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company's assets there, and it was to the effect that Alan Ottershaw would be coming back to face the music.

There had never been any embargo about telling it not in Gath or publishing it not in the streets of Askelon lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, so when Malcolm Forfar, the company's chief executive in Lasserta, heard the news at the firm's headquarters at the minehead at Wadeem, he promptly sped into Gatt-el-Abbas to talk to the Ambassador.

“I wonder what Ben Hajal Kirsa'll do now?” said Forfar without preamble. “Have a show trial, do ye think?”

Anthony Heber Hibbs waved the mine manager into a chair while his amiable wife Mollie (affectionately known throughout the entire British colony as the Diplomatic Bag) tactfully withdrew. “What will you have to drink?”

“What? Oh, a long Roman, please.” Forfar was a hard-bitten Scot whose favourite tipple was Glen Morangie malt whisky, but he did not say so. Instead he exploded with: “Talk about brinkmanship!”

“Time, my dear fellow, is an ingredient of diplomacy,” said the Ambassador. “One long Roman.”

“Thank you.” Forfar accepted the ice-cool drink of lime juice and soda water called “Roman” by the expatriate British on the strength of the ancient Latin tag about when being in Rome, doing as the Romans do. The consumption of alcohol was not permitted in the Sheikhdom of Lasserta.

“And timing,” added Heber Hibbs, sitting down himself, “is one of the tools of the trade of diplomacy.”

“I daresay it is,” responded the mine manager warmly. He had spent most of the previous weekend devising ingenious ways to scuttle the mining works in the best
Graf Spee
tradition. “But, man, just waiting for orders is a gey hard business.”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed the Ambassador soothingly. His own instructions came direct from Whitehall and therefore he was not only accustomed to waiting for them but, by now, more or less reconciled to their ambiguity. Governments of every complexion always liked to keep all their options open for as long as possible.