A Coat of Varnish (17 page)

That had been thought of, they said. The lad stood on his dignity. The day was Sunday. He remembered the thick load of Sunday papers.

‘Forget it,’ Shingler said. ‘It’s not worth any more buggering trouble. Get rid of him.’

Bale gave a judicious nod.

‘He must have made a mistake,’ he said in a kind paternal fashion. ‘There isn’t any other explanation.’ That sounded distinctly prosaic, but no one at any time in the future did any better, though the question came up again.

For Humphrey, it was being an unprofitable morning. The room cleared, and he was left with the three who worked most intimately with Briers. That was not a source of insensate excitement. They were polite, respectfully matey. He was given cups of the inescapable police tea.

Shingler was much the cleverest of the three, he thought. He was also on the make. It didn’t need much practice in professional assessment to tell one that. At sight, Humphrey rather liked Bale. He might be stiff, sober, over-correct, a pillar of society. But, then, you needed pillars here and there, and this one wasn’t an empty man. Humphrey wouldn’t have been surprised to find that he had some private expertness, right outside the force.

Flamson didn’t make any impression. Coarse-featured, coarse-fibred, why had Frank Briers picked him out? There must have been dozens of detectives as good or better. Perhaps Briers had to take what he could get. In any organisation, one couldn’t be too finicky: people were more interchangeable than it was agreeable to think.

As a general reflection, that could have applied. In the particular case, it wouldn’t. For the past twenty-four hours Flamson had been more useful to Briers than any of the others. Humphrey didn’t know, and had no means of knowing, that the inner squad, Briers included, had suddenly become both puzzled and disappointed. This had showed when Briers and his inner group could talk together, all others barred. In secret, under the careful words, they had assumed that the will would give them some pointers. The day before, Briers and the inner squad had been informed about its contents. It told them nothing at all.

The will had no picturesque features. According to Lady Ashbrook’s solicitor, it was almost a replica of a previous will, except that a bequest to an American acquaintance had been deleted, the man having recently died. All the bequests were small, £200 to Maria, £300 to Dr Perryman, £200 to Lady Ashbrook’s hairdresser. There was nothing to Loseby, except a note that she had made some provision for him during her lifetime. Possessions had been carefully bestowed, none of much value, candlesticks to Celia, other silver to acquaintances, a couple of decanters and runners to Humphrey himself. The pictures were not listed. The residue of the estate was left to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund.

The residue of the estate, since nothing substantial had been left anywhere else, meant in effect the whole of it, the tail end of the leasehold, pictures, bits of jewellery, all thrown in. There was, however, a surprise which upset the police and which, when the news spread, astonished Lady Ashbrook’s acquaintances. The solicitors judged it right to drop a hint to Briers. The estate was proved to be quite small. There would be none of the money that had been expected. All assets added up, there wasn’t likely to be £50,000. To Briers’ squad, the will, the disappearance of wealth, came as a setback. ‘No bloody motive there,’ said Shingler. He added: ‘Except for the Cancer Research Fund. Perhaps they did it.’ Brash humour was not well received. He recovered himself. ‘It’s just as well we haven’t ruled out the professional.’

‘We never have done,’ Briers said. Spontaneous as he seemed, he was impenetrable after a reverse.

‘I don’t know.’ It was Flamson, expression clouded, who couldn’t shape his thoughts. ‘It doesn’t fit in. Too many loose ends.’

‘Right, George.’ Briers didn’t reveal his own thoughts, but he was following Flamson’s. He was encouraging them, exuding energy. The thing to do in a time like this was to go on exactly as they were. The others didn’t know whether he was just soldiering on or whether he really had some foresight. Probably not, he was to say later. But he also blamed himself for being dense. This latest news, which appeared as a setback, should have told him more. It was Flamson, a simple soul, who mutely suspected that some matters seemed too simple to be true.

Frank Briers, in Humphrey’s sitting-room, was comfortable, though not restful, in the mode of action. It would have been hard to read his expression, or from it guess what progress his operation was making. Like others who were designed for action, he was immersed in the operation itself. You could have said that he was too busy to think, or alternatively too busy thinking. It was obsessive, yes; but he had learned to pace himself. This was some days after Humphrey’s second visit to the police station. Briers had not previously accepted Humphrey’s standing invitation. Now Humphrey had asked him for a specific evening because Alec Luria wanted to meet him.

Luria had a collector’s interest in able men, especially if they were doing jobs where he was ignorant. Briers, neither forward nor shrinking, had been willing to oblige – and hadn’t needed to be briefed about Luria, saying that he had picked up the name already.

Briers had arrived a quarter of an hour early, which was not by chance. He could talk to Humphrey as he wouldn’t be able to talk to a stranger; and in the mode of action Briers liked to talk. And yet, Humphrey accepted, though the talk was fluent, it was under control. Briers wasn’t telling Humphrey, to use the old security phrase, any more than he needed to know or, rather, any more than it was useful for him to know. Useful to Briers, that is. If Humphrey had heard the detectives discussing the will, he would have wondered if people he knew were feeling menaced. As it was, to Humphrey, a spectator, it was a vague heaviness, like thunder far away.

Briers was sitting in an armchair, with a whisky on the coffee-table beside him. Humphrey would have betted that, hearty but disciplined, Briers would take one more drink that evening, no less, no more. He said: ‘The lads are doing their stuff. They are coping with all the houses in the region. Down to Pimlico. They are checking any villain we know about – there are a fair number in the streets at the back of Victoria. Then they’ll go again and counter-check. Masses of paper on my desk already. I must say, Humphrey, if I was a sociologist, I should be gathering quite a lot about the manners and customs of the citizens round about. Particularly what they were doing over a period of three or four hours on a Saturday night.’

‘Any luck?’ Humphrey asked. He had a feeling that he was being underestimated. This was conversation not intended to inform.

‘It’s early days yet.’ He gazed straight at Humphrey. This might be a time when he was deciding whether to withhold or talk. He went on: ‘We have found one of the old lady’s ten-pound notes. Paid into a shop.’

Concentrated, active, Briers gazed again at the older man. ‘The first time we talked, did I give you an idea that there are one or two odd things which we don’t understand? Did I do that?’

‘You might have done,’ said Humphrey, ‘if you had been talking to someone as bright as you are.’

Briers added, lightly: ‘There were one or two unusual features about that room. I wonder if you noticed them?’

Then, switching off, he said: ‘Well, the boys will be busy round the neighbourhood. They’ll be coming nearer home soon. Actually, they’ve been in Eaton Square already.’

‘Why ever there?’

Briers broke into a broad monkey smile: ‘Purely political. If we’re going to turn Pimlico upside down, it’s just as well to make a nuisance of ourselves–’

To the rich, Briers implied; he wasn’t being candid, Humphrey was certain – though he couldn’t understand why not, any more than he had in the police station understood the echoes of constraint. But Humphrey was forming his suspicion of what Briers in reality thought.

Briers continued: ‘They’ll be beginning round here before long. You’ll have to account for yourself that Saturday night, of course.’

‘They won’t get very far with that.’ Humphrey had been distracted, but now was amused. ‘Remarkably unexciting, even to a sociologist, my dear Frank. I was either reading or watching TV. Probably both.’

Policeman’s grin from Briers: ‘Quite impossible to prove.’

Soon, punctual, punctilious, Alec Luria came into the room. There was a beautiful exchange of courtesies, as if each were trying to trump the other. ‘I am happy to have the chance of meeting you, Chief Superintendent.’ ‘Not so happy as I am, Professor.’ ‘I’ve heard so much about your career…’ ‘That’s nothing, that’s nothing, compared with those books of yours.’

Briers was not the man to be outplayed in any game of etiquette; but Humphrey also noticed that he could jerk himself out of the mode of duty, obsessive duty, and devote himself to a stranger. Any talent-spotter would have marked that down as a good pointer for his future.

On his side Luria was not the man, ceremonies decently concluded, to lose his sense of sardonic farce. A drink accepted, settled down in another armchair, his length extended, suitable preliminaries about the temperature, the value of the pound and the run-up to the American election, he then said, melancholy eyes not so melancholy: ‘Of course, you have rather the advantage of me, Chief Superintendent. Your men must have given you data about me on paper. Not too suspicious, I hope.’

Police interviews in Eaton Square, Humphrey had now realised – that was how Briers had been already briefed when Luria’s name was mentioned. Not put off, businesslike, Briers said: ‘Not in the way of business, Professor. You needn’t take out any extra insurance. I hope they didn’t waste too much of your time.’

‘I thought they made a very good job of it, if I may say so. They were very nice with it – do pass that on, if it’s any use to them.’

Luria was being paternal, suddenly ceasing to be unobtrusive. Then, unobtrusive again, he asked: ‘Stop me if I’m being too inquisitive. But am I right in thinking that all your men on this case are survivors from the purge that we’ve heard about?’

The ‘purge’ was public knowledge. The Commissioner of Metropolitan Police had, over the past three years, eliminated something like a fifth of the entire CID. (That is, the detective branch, Scotland Yard.) On the grounds of most varieties of corruption, criminal connivance and conspiracy. There had been prosecutions, and people who followed the trials had followed something of what lay behind them; but maybe it required a man as practised with information as Luria to understand the sheer scale of the scandal.

It was an occasion when Briers felt it best to be spontaneous, though, Humphrey was thinking, perhaps not as spontaneous as he seemed.

‘They wouldn’t be at work if they hadn’t survived, you know.’ He sounded bluff and cheerful.

‘Can you tell me, it must have made an effect on morale, mustn’t it? Everyone must have lost men they knew very well, casualties all over the force.’

‘There were heavy casualties, of course there were. It had to be done. You can take my oath on that. Some of us would have been glad if he could have finished off a few more.’

‘I don’t believe it could have happened in any other police force in the world.’ Luria was solemn. ‘I don’t mean yours is worse than any of the others. On the contrary. But I don’t believe any other force would have stood that purge.’

‘Professor, I want to get this a bit clearer. Policemen are very much like anyone else. Uniformed police, in this country anyway, are comparatively honest. You have to remember that they don’t have many temptations. Tiny bits of money offered. Sometimes taken. Not a real problem, though. Detectives are a different kettle of fish. You try to imagine the way they are living their whole lives. It’s a hazard of the job. They have to spend a great slice of their time with professional crooks. And crooked lawyers. That’s their world. It isn’t a very pretty world. A good many of the professional crooks and the crooked lawyers are doing very well for themselves. They make it easy for detectives to have a share in the loot. It really isn’t all that surprising that a fair number of detectives decided it was pleasant to play in the kitchen. Once that started, it became part of the set-up. Pleasant to receive a share of the dibs. Pleasant to be one of the lads. But, even more, unpleasant not to be one of the lads. Anyone who got into the CID soon discovered what he had to conform to.’

Luria nodded. ‘That I can imagine.’

‘Look here. Let me speak for myself. I don’t think that I’m specially corrupt. But men are easy to corrupt, granted the right conditions. You’d accept that?’

Luria nodded again. ‘Surely.’

‘I don’t think I’m specially uncorrupt, either. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t feel the temptation. The bosses would have liked to take me in. I was on the way up. I was the kind of character they wanted. And I could have made a killing.’

‘Why didn’t you, Frank?’ Humphrey’s question was affectionate, sarcastic.

‘Why wouldn’t you have done?’ Briers replied in kind.

‘No, tell us.’ Luria was paternal again.

‘Well, maybe two reasons. One respectable, one not so respectable. Long lines of decent honest chapel people behind me.’ For once Luria didn’t take an English reference, and Humphrey intervened – non-conformist protestants, that means. ‘It would have gone against that grain,’ Briers continued. ‘But more, not to be too kind to myself, because I’m a prudent sort of animal. I decided that they would be caught in the long run. Everyone knew. Someone, some day, would be tough enough to act. And I didn’t think any money in the world was worth that risk. And also I happened to be ambitious. Money might be fun, but if I had to choose I’d a damn sight rather try for the top jobs.’

‘You’re underestimating yourself, you know,’ Luria said.

‘Have it your own way,’ Briers replied. ‘Anyway, here I am. I’m a survivor. A good many of them aren’t. They made a killing. But quite a lot of the offices on the best floors are empty now. Former occupants don’t need them any more.’

‘Why don’t they need those offices?’