The Queen v. Karl Mullen (13 page)

At the end of two hours Hartmann said, “Either something very elaborate has been done – like burying a transmitter in the wall and plastering it over – or you’re clean.”

“I don’t think anyone would have had time to do anything like that. Even if they got in at night, they’d have to have finished before we opened up again. If you say we’re clean, then I can only say I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

“No trouble,” said the young man. “I used to do a lot of this work back home. Glad of a chance to keep my hand in.”

Yule looked at his watch and decided that, if he hurried, he could get to his club in time for dinner. As he was making for the door, Hartmann pointed to the bowler-hat which hung on the far end one of a line of pegs and said, “Not taking your hat with you?”

“That hat!” said Yule. “I bought it when I first came because I was told that it was correct wear for a gentleman in the City. First time I wore it I decided I looked absurd and I’ve never worn it since.”

“Interesting,” said Hartmann. He removed the hat gently from its peg. The transmitter was taped inside it.

When Hartmann and his friend had gone Mullen said, very red in the face, “This is an outrage. We must find out who put it there.”

“Yes,” said Yule. He was holding the little box in his hand, examining it curiously.

“It’s going to be a bit difficult, isn’t it? You aren’t as careful about security here as we are back home. What about that girl who came last week to disinfect the telephones? She was left alone in the room. Only for a minute or two, but quite long enough.”

“You’re not thinking straight,” said Yule. “The person who selected that hat as a hiding-place must have known I never used it.”

“In that case—”

“Which means that the only really likely people are my secretary and the three girls next door. They knew about the hat
and
they’re in and out of this room all day. Possibly someone from the second floor, but much less likely. If one of them wants to see me he has to come through my secretary’s room and if I wasn’t here she wouldn’t, normally, let them in.”

“It’s still a wide field.”

“I can think of a way of shortening it,” said Yule. He was taping the box back into the hat. “First, we’ll have to set the scene. I’ll get Silverborn – I think we must trust him – to station himself at eleven o’clock at a point in the passage upstairs where he can see into the different offices, or at least move into them quickly. You, I suggest, will be standing between Mrs. Portland’s room and the typists’ room, with both doors open.”

“And you?”

“I shall be in here, preparing a surprise for my staff.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“It’s very simple. They’re going to have a race. And I’m going to be the starter.” He was smiling as he said this, but not very pleasantly.

Next morning, at one minute before eleven, Yule took down the bowler-hat and placed it on the desk with the open side towards him. Then he took out a small pistol of the sort used for starting races, presented it close to the black box, said “One two three, go” and pulled the trigger.

The report was loud enough to reach the upper floor and Mr. Silverborn had to reassure the workforce and prevent them from coming down to catch the presumed assassin. Mrs. Portland rushed into Yule’s office in horror and was relieved to see him standing by his desk, smiling. He pocketed the pistol and joined Mullen in the secretaries’ room.

Here all attention was focused on Rosemary, who was slumped, face forward, on her desk, moaning. Mullen stalked over, seized her by the shoulders and shook her. Something tinkled down onto the floor. Mullen picked up the small golden receiver, stowed it away in his pocket and said, “Now we know, don’t we? You filthy little spy. If you’d tried a trick like that in our country, you’d have been stripped and whipped.”

Rosemary stared at him dazedly.

“Do you hear me, filthy bitch?”

She could see his lips moving, but could hear nothing. Her silence seemed to enrage him. He hit her, a swinging blow, on the side of her face. The ring he was wearing opened a long cut in her cheek.

“I think that’s enough,” said Yule. “Another effort by our Mornington Square friends, I imagine.” And to the girls, “When she comes to her senses, you might tell her that we’ll post her papers on to her.”

“When she comes to her senses,” said Mullen, who still seemed to be beside himself. “Surely you’re not letting her stay another minute in this building. Throw the slut out into the street.”

Kathleen, who was not lacking in courage, said, “I expect she’d be glad to get away. I know I should.” She and Mavis helped Rosemary into her coat and down towards the street door, with an arm round her on each side.

The commissionaire said, “What’s going on? I heard a shot.”

“It was Mr. Yule,” said Kathleen. “One of his jokes. Do you think you could whistle up a taxi?”

The fresh air seemed to have revived Rosemary. She said, “No. Please don’t bother, I’m quite all right now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

Mavis had brought down her handbag. She used a tissue out of it to dab away the blood from the long cut on her cheek.

“What’s it all about?” said the commissionaire.

“Like I told you,” said Kathleen, “Mr. Yule’s been playing games. And they’re not the sort of games that appeal to me, as I’ll tell him when I hand in
my
notice.”

“I don’t expect I shall be staying, either,” said Mavis. “Not with that Mullen horror hanging round.”

Once she was outside and walking Rosemary felt better. The bomb which had gone off inside her head had blacked her out and deafened her. The thudding had slowed down and she could hear outside sounds again. Her one idea was to get home.

The mid-morning traffic on the underground had sunk to a trickle. Rosemary sank back thankfully into her seat in the half empty carriage. Getting out at the Angel station proved curiously difficult. There were moments when her legs did not seem to belong to her.

“Nearly home now,” she said to herself as she set off down Goswell Road. One difficulty was that the pavement was soft. It seemed to be several inches deep in sand, so that she was forced to drag each foot out before she could replant it.

By this time she was not thinking very clearly, but clearly enough to realise that this was nonsense. As she turned into the long straight road which led past the reservoir she was saying, out loud, “This is nonsense. They don’t sprinkle deep sand on London pavements.”

When she was halfway down the road she noticed that the brick wall on her right, which skirted the reservoir grounds, was moving. First it was a very slight movement, as if the bricks were shaking themselves. Then it became more definite and more menacing. The wall was leaning forward. She saw that it was going to fall on top of her and crush her and that she must get out before it did so. That meant running, which was difficult, because the sand was so deep. The best thing to do was to lie down, quite flat.

A head looked over the wall. It belonged to a boy with red hair. He had pulled himself onto the top of the wall and was preparing to lower himself over it when he saw Rosemary. A shrill whistle, delivered through a gap in his front teeth, brought up two more heads, one blond, one mouse-coloured.

The heads belonged to three boys from the Finsbury Secondary School. They were there at that hour in the morning because the staff at their school had staged a lightning strike. This had enabled the boys to carry out, in daylight, a project over which they would have hesitated later in the day. They had decided to explore the wasteland round the reservoir.

They had pitched their base camp – a blanket over sticks – under the wall and had spent a gruesome, but happy, two hours searching for dead and dismembered bodies. When their stomachs told them it was lunch-time they had returned to camp.

They stared down at Rosemary. Dead, possibly. But not dismembered. Maybe not even dead. They saw one of her legs move. The red head, who was leader of the group, said, “Perhaps she’s fainted.” The blond boy said, “If she just lies there, she might die of cold. That’s what happens when you’ve had a shock, I was told.”

“Get the blanket,” said the red head. The tent was dismantled and the blanket was dropped to the pavement. The boys followed it and were getting it tucked round Rosemary when a battered Morris four-door saloon drew up and a young man jumped out. He said, “Hallo, hallo. Killed someone, have you, Ginger? And trying to hide the body.”

“Nothing like that, Mr. Tamplin,” said the red head, who seemed to know the young man. “We found her here. Put our blanket over her.”

“Shock,” said the blond boy. “Keep her warm.”

“Very sensible,” said Fred Tamplin. “First thing to do is find out where she lives. Probably somewhere near here.”

He had opened Rosemary’s bag and found a City Northern Institute student’s card in the name of Rosemary Herbert, address 10 Mornington Square.

“Good,” he said. “That’s just round the corner. Give us a hand and we’ll take her there in the car.”

Rosemary was deposited, by four pairs of hands, on the back seat of the car. Ginger, who felt her to be his personal property, got in beside her, the other two boys squashed into the front seat and the rescue party moved off.

The door of the Orange Consortium was opened by Boyo Sesolo. When he saw who it was they had in the car he opened the car door, picked Rosemary out, still wrapped in the blanket, and carried her into the house. Her weight was nothing to his great arms.

By now Fred Tamplin’s professional curiosity was beginning to stir. He was the male half of the reporting staff on the
Highside Times and Journal.
With a feeling that a story of some sort was in the offing, he followed Sesolo into the house.

Sesolo started up the stairs, stopping for a moment to bellow something that sounded like ‘Colin’ or, perhaps, ‘Captain’. A voice from higher up shouted, “What is it?” and footsteps came clattering down.

Sesolo jerked his head and said, “This gent brought her. I’ll put her on her bed, shall I?”

“Would you do that? Then ring the Whittington Hospital. Ask for emergency and see if they can send a doctor.”

Tamplin said, “Actually it was these boys found her. She was lying on the pavement. I happened to be along with my car.”

“It was extremely kind of you. My daughter’s been a bit under the weather lately. I expect they sent her home from work.”

“More sensible if they’d sent her in a taxi. Would you mind very much if I waited until the doctor had seen her? I’d like to be certain she’s all right.”

Hartshorn looked faintly surprised, but said, “Of course. Why don’t you wait in here?”

He opened the door of a small anteroom. It led to the main office from which Tamplin could hear the sound of more than one typewriter being bashed.

“Don’t let me keep you,” said Tamplin. “You’ll want to be with your daughter when she surfaces.”

When he was alone he sat for some time trying to make out, from the contents of the room, just exactly what the business of the Orange Consortium might be. He heard what he took to be the doctor arriving and running upstairs. There were four filing cabinets, but these told him nothing since the cards in the shelf slots were simply lettered A–B, C–E and so on. He transferred his attention to the bookshelf in the corner. It contained few books, but a stack of periodicals mostly dealing with South African matters. There were also a number of reports and blue books. One, which he extracted, was titled ‘HMSO 134/00019/86 – Report of the Commission set up under the Commonwealth Relations Office as authorised by motion of the House of Commons tabled 13 February 1986’. Tamplin had taken this out to find out exactly what the Commonwealth Relations Office had got worried about in February 1986 when he heard the sound of someone coming downstairs and pushed the book back.

He thought it was the doctor, but the steps were much more deliberate. When the door opened and the newcomer appeared it turned out to be an elderly coloured gentleman, with a short grizzled beard and gold spectacles. He had apparently come to collect the cloak and wide-awake hat which were hanging behind the door. He said, “If you are waiting for Mr. Mkeba, I must apologise for keeping you. He is quite free now.”

Tamplin had a reporter’s memory for faces and names. He said, “Surely you are Professor Leon Macheli. Only the other day I was reading an account of the talk you gave at the London School of Economics and there was a photograph of you in the
Sentinel
.”

“I’d no idea I was so famous.”

“Your talk seems to have been well received.”

“Yes, indeed. The young people showed great interest in what I was able to tell them about conditions in South Africa.”

“It’s a topic of interest to everyone today. Won’t you sit down for a moment? That is, if you’re not pressed for time.”

“I’m not pressed for anything these days,” said the Professor with a gentle smile. “Except, if I might be quite frank with you, for money.”

“You’re not the only one,” said Tamplin. “I don’t want to seem inquisitive, but are the people here able to help you?”

“Indeed, they are most generous. I hardly know what my wife and I would do without them. Am I right in thinking that it was you who picked up that poor girl?”

“I and my allies,” said Tamplin. He could see the three boys perched on the railing that ran round Mornington Square. “I don’t think it was anything more than a faint. The doctor will tell us when he comes down. And I imagine they’ve sent for her husband.”

“Her husband?”

“Rosemary Herbert’s husband.”

“I’m afraid you’ve got that quite wrong. The girl upstairs, the one you so kindly picked up, is Rosemary Hartshorn. She’s Captain Hartshorn’s child. His only one and unmarried, as far as I know.”

“Stupid of me. I must have got the name wrong. But tell me, Professor, why are you hiding your light under a bushel?”

“My light—?”

“You’re a well-known man. In your own line, one of the top men.”

“It’s good of you to say so.”

“I’d like to say more and I’d like to say it in print.” Tamplin produced his card. “We’re not a national newspaper, but we’re the one that most people read in this part of London. We’ve not got so many celebrities living among us that we can disregard one when he does arrive. If you could spare me the time, I’d like to do a piece about your work.”