Cargo of Eagles (3 page)

His passenger took out his wallet and extracted a photograph.

‘That's someone I'd like you to look for. He'll be quite a bit older than he is there. His name by the way is Teague—James Teague.'

Morty studied the picture. It was a head only: the man had been caught by a press photographer, looking over his shoulder. It was a distinctive face, handsome and swarthy in the white-toothed fashion of the early film stars and crowned with sweeping, curls of black hair. He could have been in his mid-thirties, but the outstanding impresson he gave was of youth and that superabundant energy and vivacity which go to make the powerful visual personality. He looked both dangerous and exciting. A violent, magnetic, unpredictable animal.

‘Quite a guy.' The younger man handed back the print. ‘I'll know him if I see him. It's not a face you'd miss anywhere, let alone in my little Saltey.'

His grin held a remembered pleasure and Campion spoke on impulse.

‘What is it that attracts you so down there? A woman?'

A guilty colour suffused Morty's cheeks.

‘Not really,' he said with dignity. ‘And certainly not that little tramp.' He paused, amused at himself, before continuing. ‘But in a way you're right. I did happen to encounter a dazzler down there the other day. She could become one of your new residents in time, but that's almost too much to hope for. She's just inherited a house in the respectable part of the village and there's some sort of trouble packaged in with the deal. She certainly has something, that one.' He was staring into the greenery ahead of him and his wide smile twisted.

‘I'm crazy,' he said with the tolerance of a man who cannot quite credit his own absurdity. ‘I've only seen her for a few minutes. She came into The Demon with someone who was showing her round. In fact she was only . . .'

‘Passing by?' suggested Mr Campion.

Morty laughed at himself. ‘And across a crowded room, same like the other song says. Forget it, I'll recover. I'm to look for the picturesque guy in the photograph. Is that all?'

‘Not quite. I'm also interested in a man with a glass eye. If he should appear, get on to me at once.'

‘O.K. Any other distinguishing marks? I mean that sort of thing is very well made these days. I could miss it.'

‘I don't think so. Not this one. He is a tall man with a protuberant real eye and the unequal effect is noticeable—or used to be. That's what I'm told. Also his own eye is that very bright clear Nordic blue which you find on your own east coast. Difficult to match, you know. The tendency is to get the false one too electric. Should this lad appear Lugg will go to ground, so it will be up to you to keep him in your sights. I take it you're treating Lugg as a stranger?'

‘Oh, yes. We fraternise as man to man in the pub but everyone thinks we met down there. May I ask what we're supposed to be up to?'

‘I'd much rather you didn't. It may be safer that way. Do you mind?'

‘Not at all.' Morty was polite but astonished. ‘Who am I working for?'

‘Me,' said Mr Campion promptly. ‘Me alone, I'm afraid. And as for me, I'm working for a lady.'

‘Her Majesty?' Morty was a royalist by nature.

The thin man appeared momentarily embarrassed. ‘Well, no, as a matter of fact,' he said with uncharacteristic awkwardness. ‘
Au contraire
, now I come to think of it.'

MR CAMPION HAD
been a member of Puffins, one of the least publicised of London Clubs, for many years and never expected to find himself embarrassed by the fact, but as he hurried down St James's towards the Georgian portico he felt an unfamiliar discomfort. He passed the place at speed and his sidestep into the alcove which concealed the service entrance to Fitzherbert's, the Club next door, was furtive.

He was keeping an appointment with Stanislaus Oates, a retired Assistant Commissioner of Police famous in his day, and the choice of rendezvous was typical of that ingenious old man's latest phase. Membership of Fitzherbert's was said still to be decided by heredity and it certainly remained a last stronghold of unregenerate class consciousness and the kind of prejudice which is on the direct route to embalmment.

On the other hand old Oates, who had risen from the ranks and never suffered from fear of heights, appreciated service, privacy and comfort when he saw them. Fitzherbert's appealed to him strongly and nowadays, when he came to town from his retreat in the suburbs, he made a point of looking up one of his erstwhile sergeants who had a job in charge of security in the basement there. Often he stayed the whole afternoon and evening, during which time people were liable to drop in to see him. Mr Campion was one of many who were highly dubious of the ethics of such an expedient, but then, as was the case with most other callers, it was he who was seeking help.

Today he went quickly down the area steps, restrained himself from pulling up his collar, scuttled past cellar and kitchen doors and turned into a third entrance. This was as uninviting as he had been warned to expect and as he came to the end he
found himself in a small hall containing six service doors. They were all blank save for one which bore a hand-lettered ticket with the inspired instruction: ‘
Try next door
'.

He tapped softly and lifted the card to reveal a metal grille with an interior shutter. It opened at once and a pair of suspicious eyes looked out at him. He murmured his name, the eyes defrosted and he was shown at once into a small butler's pantry where silver cleaning was in process. A man who was clearly an ex-sergeant, superb in a crested baize apron, motioned him towards an inner room.

‘Mr Oates will see you now, sir.'

But for the fancy dress he could have been back at the Yard again. Mr Campion stepped into a snug apartment whose walls were lined with glass fronted steel grilled cupboards. These were kept lit perpetually for security's sake and upon their shelves in limpid glory the old Club's fabled collection of George II silver glittered like a fairy tale, proclaiming without contradiction that it was worth a fortune of anybody's money. A mahogany table filled the centre of the room and there was a shabby green leather armchair on either side of a garrulous gas fire.

Oates was dozing in one of these and he opened an eye as Campion appeared. He was growing frail and the discovery hit the newcomer who had not seen him for a year or two. For so long he had regarded that grey man with the mournful bloodhound face and the thick stomach as the finest policeman of them all. To find him grown old at this of all times was a blow he had not envisaged.

Meanwhile the ex-A.C. was permitting himself a sly little grin at his own cleverness which in his early days he would certainly have kept hidden.

‘How do you like my office? I spotted its value as soon as I saw that peephole in the outer door,' he said proudly. ‘It makes the perfect interview room, don't it? Just the spot for a quiet jaw. We're much more comfortable down here than we would be upstairs, you know.'

Mr Campion could not have agreed with him more, if only in view of the fact that neither of them were members, and he said so with mild reproof.

Oates grunted. ‘Move with the times, my boy. The Old Pal's Act isn't confined to you public school types above stairs now. You've taught the rest of us the drill. Jessop and I are a cell of our own down here. If I'm caught, by the way, I'm an insurance man come to see no one has hocked the trophies. That ought to cover me, don't you think?'

His visitor regarded him in astonishment. The recklessness inherent in age had unleashed an unsuspected impish streak in his old friend.

‘I don't know what you'll be, Albert.'

‘I do,' said Mr Campion with feeling. ‘Now, any news of James Teague?'

To his relief the mischief in Oates' eyes faded and his frown grew cold.

‘They've still not found him. It's not Luke's fault. There's so much efficiency at the old place today that a routine job like keeping an eye on a released prisoner is almost too simple for the clever beggars.'

Mr Campion who had brightened a little at the mention of Superintendent Charles Luke, whom he admired, relapsed into anxiety.

‘I couldn't believe it of them,' he said. ‘They knew it was important. To lose him within a matter of hours seems inept. I made certain the press would have got on to it.'

‘Would you? I think they've forgotten him. Remember that paper was very short at the time, so he didn't quite make his fair share of headlines. He's been inside a long time and he earned no remission. A bad prisoner in his early days and a trouble maker—two attempted escapes and a warder beaten up.'

‘I gathered that.' Mr Campion sat down in the other armchair. ‘I was out of the country at the time, so I've been looking it up. There doesn't seem to have been an appeal.'

‘No. His counsel—that was old Ted Edwards K.C.—boxed clever over his good war record, hinted at shock, tried for a reprieve instead, and made it.'

Oates was talking with the authority of a man who had been there. ‘It was a wicked business. Teague was so reckless that you could say he was mad. He led this boarding party on to Christoff's yacht the
Clymene
on the high seas and shot the mate in cold blood in the course of the raid. Murder and piracy—they called it Pirracy in court for some reason—almost the only two crimes we still take seriously. He was an uncomplicated villain, a natural killer with practical wartime experience. It was only old Lord Pendleton's horror of capital punishment which saved him from hanging. He got a hell of a sentence and he deserved every day of it.'

‘And now you think he's forgotten?'

The prim mouth smiled. ‘Well, he's not the news he was, is he? We've had a lot of spectacular violence since Jimmy Teague. I didn't expect crowds round the prison gates.'

Mr Campion was not satisfied. ‘He was very colourful,' he murmured. ‘Irresistible to women and all that. Could only be killed by a silver bullet, and used them himself in case anyone else had the same theory. You knew that tale, I suppose? I know he had no family but you'd have thought someone would have turned up if only because some of the loot was never recovered.'

‘Loot?' Oates cocked an eyebrow. ‘That's an unlikely interest—for you. Well, well. Who's left? As I recall it there were only four men on the pirate craft. She was some sort of Air Sea Rescue launch called the
Lily Marina.
Two are dead. Teague was caught and only Target Burrows got clean away out of the country . . . .' He paused. ‘Or at least that's what Chief Inspector Yeo and I thought at the time and we should have known.'

‘Burrows was the one-eyed man?'

‘The engineer. A sly feckless fellow by all accounts, and a bully when he had the chance. Always making irritating jokes
of the sort that would be called “sick” these days. One of his wife's boy friends got so wild with him one night that he shot straight at his face with the kid's airgun and knocked his eye out. Burrows nearly killed the man but the neighbours called him “Target” after that. What a brutal race we are, Campion! I often think that.'

His visitor ignored the digression. ‘Surely the police must still be interested where the man goes unless they've written off the stuff?'

‘That's a thing we never do, as you very well know. If loot is really what you are concerned about why not go to Luke? I thought you two were as thick as tealeaves?'

Mr Campion did not respond. Instead he returned to the main subject.

‘Christoff offered fifteen thousand pounds reward for the jewellery alone. I've just seen it on the files.'

‘Mister Christoff was a multi-millionaire, a very arrogant gentleman and he was driven pretty well off his nut by the sheer cheek of the robbery,' said Oates placidly. ‘The size of the reward was governed by his feelings not the insurance value of the goods. He told me so himself. It was nice stuff, belonged strictly speaking to his wife, and very distinctive from the photographs. There was a tiara, two bracelets, necklace, earrings and a brooch. All in a matching design of golden birds with diamond eyes and sprays. Costume jewellery, for a man in his income bracket. Its breakdown value wouldn't have been enormous. I always thought that was why Teague went berserk. He expected something more.'

‘As I read it, Teague killed because he was recognised,' objected the thin man. ‘There was an Australian deckhand on the yacht who recognised him despite his mask. He gave evidence at the trial how he spotted him as he came aboard and told the mate. The mate, poor chap, addressed Teague by name and got a silver bullet for his trouble. Isn't that the way it went?'

‘Perhaps so. All the same it wasn't a great haul and Teague
is one of those larger than life characters who resent any events which don't match up to their own idea of themselves. He got under a thousand pounds in cash from the safe, two pictures from the owner's state room, a few valuable odds and ends and a parcel of booze still crated which must have been hell's delight to transfer in mid-ocean.'

He paused and lay back in the chair, his eyes half closed. ‘I've been sitting here and thinking about you,' he said presently.

‘Oh, yes? With what in view?'

‘I was wondering what the devil you could be up to. I had one idea.'

‘Does it matter?' Campion made the request very gently but Oates had grown old enough to be openly disappointed.

‘I don't want to know your blasted business,' he said. ‘I've known you for close on thirty years. I'll tell you what I thought, though. It couldn't have been hard cash or we'd have heard all about it. But suppose some of those cases of champagne contained something equally heavy but potentially much more valuable . . . paper, for instance?'

‘Paper?' His visitor might never have heard of the material.