Young Petrella (26 page)

The chase was over.

“I’m not saying,” said Palance, “that it wasn’t a success. It was a success. Yes.”

Haxtell said nothing. He knew just how Palance was feeling and sympathised with him.

“We’ve got back the Alfrey diamonds, and we’ve got our hands on that man at Staines. An insurance broker, of all things, and quite unsuspected. Judging from what we found in the false bottom of a punt in his boathouse he’s been receiving stolen goods for years. And we’ve stopped up one of the Ponting middlemen at that tobacconist’s in Balham. A little more pressure and we may shop the Pontings, too.”

“Quite,” said Haxtell sympathetically.

“All the same, it was a mad way to do it. You can’t get over that, Haxtell. How long have you known that Coulman was a man?”

“We realised that as soon as we started to think about it,” said Haxtell. “It was obviously impossible for a real, middle-aged buxom woman to turn into a convincing man. But, conversely, it was easy enough for a man dressed as a woman, padded and powdered and wigged, to whip it all off and turn back quickly into his own self.”

“Then do you mean to say,” said Palance, “that the Mrs. Coulman my men were watching for a month – doing her shopping, gossiping, hanging out her washing, having tea with the vicar – was really a man all the time?”

“Certainly not,” said Haxtell. Observing symptoms of apoplexy, he said, “That
was
Mrs. Coulman. She had a brother – two, actually. One was killed by the Nazis. The other one got over to England. Whenever she had a big job on hand, her brother would come along at night. The house she lived in was at the end of the row. There was a way in at the side. He could slip in late at night without anyone seeing him. Next day he’d dress up in his sister’s coat and hat and go out and do the job. She stayed quietly at home.”

“When you realised this,” said Palance, “wouldn’t it have been better to do the job properly? You could have had a hundred men if necessary.”

“It wouldn’t have worked. Not a chance. You can’t beat a methodical man like Coulman by being more methodical. He’ll outdo you every time. The Underground, the change of clothes, the careful train check before he started for Staines, the long straight road, and the ferry. What you want with a man like that is luck – and imagination.”

“Yes, but—” said Palance.

“Method, ingenuity, system,” said Haxtell. “You’ll never beat a German at his own game. Look at the Gestapo. They tried for five years and even they couldn’t pull it off. The one thing they lacked was imagination. Perhaps it was a good thing. A little imagination, and they might have caused a lot more bother.”

He sounded pleased, and had every reason to be. His own promotion to Superintendent had just come through.

“You’re wanted down at Central,” said Gwilliam. “They want to have a little chat with you about your pension.”

“My pension?” said Detective Sergeant Petrella. Being nearer twenty than thirty, pensions were not a thing which entered much into his thoughts. “You’re sure it’s not my holiday? I’ve been promised a holiday for eighteen months.”

“Last month I saw the pensions officer,” said Gwilliam, “he said to me, ‘Sergeant Gwilliam, it’s a dangerous job you’re doing.’ It was the time I was after that Catford dog-track shower and I said, ‘You’re right, there, my boy.’ ‘Do you realise, Sergeant,’ he said to me, ‘that every year for the past ten years one hundred and ninety policemen have left the force with collapsed arches? And this year we may pass the two hundred mark. We shall have to raise your insurance contributions.’”

Petrella went most of the way down to Westminster by bus. It was a beautiful morning, with spring breaking through all round. Having some time in hand he got off the bus at Piccadilly, walked down St. James’s, and cut across the corner of the park.

It was a spring which was overdue. They had had a dismal winter. In the three years he had been in Y Division, up at Highside, he could not remember anything like it. The devil seemed to have got among the pleasant people of North London. First, an outbreak of really nasty hooliganism; led, as he suspected, by two boys of good family, but he hadn’t been able to pin it on them. Then the silly business of the schoolgirl shoplifting gang. Then the far from silly, the dangerous and tragic matter of Cora Wynne.

Gwynne was the oldest by several years of the Highside detectives, having come to them from the Palestine police. He was a quiet but well-liked man, and he had one daughter, Cora, who was seventeen. Six months before, Cora had gone. She had not disappeared; she had departed, leaving a note behind her saying that she wanted to live her own life. “Whatever that means,” Wynne had said to Superintendent Haxtell.

“Let her run,” Haxtell had replied. “She’ll come back.” He was right. She came back at the end of the fifth month, in time to die. She was full of cocaine, and pregnant.

Petrella shook his head angrily as he thought about it. He stopped to look at the crocuses which were thick in the grass. A starved-looking sparrow was trying to bolt a piece of bread almost as large as itself. A pigeon sailed smoothly down and removed it. Petrella walked on, up the steps into King Charles Street, across Whitehall, and under the arch into New Scotland Yard.

He was directed to the office that dealt with pensions, allotted a wooden chair, and told to wait. At eleven o’clock a messenger brought in a filing tray with six cups of tea on it, and disappeared through a swing door in the partition. Since the tray was empty when he returned, Petrella deduced that there must be at least six people devoting attention to the pensions of the Metropolitan Police and he hoped that one of them would soon find time to devote some attention to him.

He became aware that the messenger had halted opposite him.

“You Sergeant Pirelli?” he said.

“That’s right,” said Petrella. He had long ago given up correcting people about it.

“CID, Y Division?”

“Ten out of ten.”

“Whassat?”

“I said you’re quite right.”

“I’ll tell ’em you’re here,” said the messenger.

Five minutes later a cheerful-looking girl arrived and said, “Sergeant Petrella? Would you come with me, please?”

His opinion of the Pensions Section became a good deal more favourable. Any department that employed a girl with legs like that must have some good in it.

So engrossed was he in this speculation that it did not, at first, occur to him to ask where they were going. When they reached, and pushed through, a certain swing door on the first floor, he stopped her.

“You’ve got it wrong,” he said. “This is where the top brass work. If we don’t look out we shall be busting in on the Assistant Commissioner.”

“That’s right,” said the girl. She knocked on one of the doors on the south side of the corridor; opened it without waiting for an answer; said, “I have Sergeant Petrella here for you,” and stood aside.

He advanced dazedly into the room. He had been there once before, and he knew that the grey-haired man behind the desk was Assistant Commissioner Romer, of the CID; a man who, unlike some of his predecessors, had not come to his office through the soft byways of the legal department, but had risen from the bottom-most rung of the ladder, making enemies at every step, until finally he had found himself at the top; when, there being no one left to fight, he had proved himself a departmental head of exceptional ability.

In a chair beside the window he noted Superintendent Costorphine, who specialised in all matters connected with narcotics. He had worked for him on two previous occasions and had admired him, although he could not love him.

Romer said, in a very friendly voice, “Sit down, will you, Sergeant. This is going to take some time. You know Costorphine, don’t you? I’m sorry about this cloak-and-dagger stuff, but you’ll understand better when I explain what it’s about, and what we’re going to ask you to do. And when I say ‘ask’ I mean just that. Nothing that’s said this morning is anything approaching an order. It’s a suggestion. If you turn it down, no one’s going to think any the worse of you. In fact, Costorphine and myself will be the only people who will even know about it.”

Assuming a cheerfulness which he was far from feeling, Petrella said, “You tell me what you want me to do, sir, then I can tell you if I want to run away.”

Romer nodded at Costorphine, who said in his school-masterly voice, “Almost a year ago, we noted a new source of entry of cocaine into this country. Small packets of it were taken from distributors
inside
the country. It was never found in large quantities, and we never found how it got in.

“Analysis showed it to be Egyptian in origin. It also showed quite apppreciable deposits of copper. It is obviously not there as the result of any part of the process of manufacture, and it is reasonable to suppose that it came there during some stage in shipment or entry.

“Once the source had been identified, we analysed every sample we laid hands on, and it became clear—” Costorphine paused fractionally, not for effect, he was a man who had no use for effects, but because he wished to get certain figures clear in his own head – “that rather over half of the total intake of illicit cocaine coming into this country was coming under this head. And that the supply was increasing.”

“And along with it,” said Romer, “were increasing, at a rate of geometrical progression, most of the unpleasant elements of criminal activity with which we have to deal. Particularly among juveniles. I’ve had some figures from America which made my hair stand on end. We’re not quite as bad as them yet, but we’re learning.”

Petrella could have said, “There’s no need to tell me. I knew Cora Wynne when she was a nice, friendly schoolgirl of fourteen, and I saw her just before she died.” But he kept quiet.

Romer went on, “I suppose if youth thinks it may be blown to smithereens inside five or ten years by some impersonal force pressing a button, it’s predisposed to experiment. I don’t know. Anyway, you’ll understand why we thought it worth bringing down a busy detective sergeant from Y Division and wasting his morning for him.

“Now, I’m going to give you some facts. We’ll start, as our investigators started about nine months ago, with a gentleman called Batson. Mr. Batson is on the board of the Consort Line, a company which owns and runs three small cargo steamers: the
Albert Consort,
the
William Consort,
and the
Edward Consort:
steamers which run between various Mediterranean ports, Bordeaux, and London.”

When Romer said, “Bordeaux”, Petrella looked up at Costorphine, who nodded.

“Bordeaux, but not the racket you’re thinking of,” he said. “We’ve checked that.”

“Batson,” went on Romer, “is not only on the board of the Consort Line. It has been suggested that he
is
the board. But one thing about him is quite certain. Whatever his connection with this matter he, personally, takes no active part. He neither carries the stuff nor has any direct contact with the distributors. But I think that, at the end of the day, the profit goes to him.

“That being so, we looked carefully at his friends, and the one who caught our eye was Captain Cree. Ex-captain now, since he has retired from the services of the Consort Line, and lives in considerable affluence in a house at Greenwich. He maintains a financial interest in the
Consorts
through his friend, Mr. Batson, and acts as chandler and shore agent for them – finds them crews and cargoes, and buys their stores.

“All of which might add up, in cash, to a nice house at Greenwich, but wouldn’t really account for” – Romer ticked them off on his fingers – “two personal motor cars, with a chauffeur body-servant to look after the same, a diesel-engined tender called
Clarissa
and based on Wapping, with a full-time crew of three and, in addition to all these, a large number of charitable and philanthropic enterprises, chiefly among seamen and boys in the dockside area.”

“He sounds perfectly terrible,” said Petrella.

“Such a statement, made outside these four walls,” said Romer, “would involve you in very heavy damages for defamation. Captain Cree is a respectable, and a respected, citizen. One of his fondest interests is the Sark Lane Mission.”

“The Sark Lane—”

“The name is familiar to you? It should be. The Mission was one of the first in Dockland, and it was founded by your old school.”

“Of course. I remember now. We used to have a voluntary subscription of five shillings taken off us on the first day of every term. I don’t think anyone took any further interest in it.”

“I should imagine that one of the troubles of the Sark Lane Mission is that people have not taken enough interest in it. The Missioner for the last twenty-five years has been a Mr. Jacobson. A very good man, in his way and, in his early years, energetic and successful. Jacobson finally retired last month, at the age of seventy-five.

“I should imagine that for the last ten years his appearances at the Mission have been perfunctory. The place has really been kept going by an old, ex-naval man called Batchelor – and by the regular munificence of Captain Cree.”

“I see,” said Petrella. He felt that there must be something more to it than that.

“The appointment of the Missioner lies with the School Governors, but they act on the recommendation of the Bishop of London. Sometimes the post is filled by a clergyman. Sometimes not. On this occasion, the recommended candidate was the Reverend Freebone.”

“Philip Freebone!”

“The present incumbent of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Highside. You know him, I believe?”

“Very well indeed. He started up at Highside as curate, and when the incumbent died he was left in charge. I can’t imagine anyone who would do the job better.”

“I can,” said Romer.

When he had got over the shock, Petrella did not pretend not to understand him.

“I don’t think I could get away with it, sir,” he said. “Not for any length of time. There’d be a hundred things I’d do wrong.”

“I’m not suggesting that you should pose as a clergyman. You could go as Mr. Freebone. You’ve had some experience with youth clubs, I believe.”