Old Flames (31 page)

‘Cronies? Why cronies? Why not just say friends?’

‘I haven’t looked it up in the dictionary, but I would hardly be surprised to find that the definition of “crony” was “disreputable friend”.’

The next time Rod referred to Driberg or Fermanagh as being ‘one of your cronies’, he would have to remember to feel insulted.

‘Or,’ she went on, ‘were you thinking of a more conspiratorial meaning?’

‘I think perhaps I was.’

‘Then I’m sorry to have kept him from you. But now you’ve met him I think you’ll see my point. If Arnold was up to something, George Jessel is the sort of chap would lie
through his teeth for him, and think it nothing more than matey loyalty, wouldn’t he?’

‘Yes, I rather think he would.’

‘Are you planning to see him again?’

‘Oh, yes. He can marinade overnight and I’ll roast him tomorrow.’

Back in the joyless Kedleston, he spread Cockerell’s records out across the bed and found he had no
heart for such joyless reading. He skimmed the headlines in the
Manchester Guardian.
Read another lengthy piece on the burgeoning crisis in Suez, and fell asleep without even opening the Ian
Fleming.

He breakfasted among the brown suits. Something hot, something tasteless, washed down with something lukewarm. He gave Jessel the best part of half an hour to gather himself, a
safe margin to let the anxiety build in him, stuffed all Cockerell’s papers back into his briefcase, and on the dot of ten climbed the staircase to his office. In the first room, the
typewriter stood unused under its plastic cover. He had expected to find some young woman filing papers or her nails.

The door to Jessel’s office was ajar. He pushed gently at it without knocking. Jessel was sprawled in his chair, head back, eyes open, dead.

‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Troy said.

He put his fingertips to the side of Jessel’s neck. Warm, but definitely dead. He stood by the corpse, slowly turning his head to take in as much as he could. He had just as much time as
it took till the next person, whoever that might be, arrived.

He heard a rustle from the outer office, across the landing.

Shit, shit, shit.

A young woman was lifting the cover from the typewriter. As she raised her face to him, he could see the side of her cheek was badly swollen.

‘Are you Mr Jessel’s secretary?’

She mmmed at him and nodded vigorously.

‘Call the police,’ he said. ‘The local station, not 999.’

She froze. Stared anxiously at him.

‘You have the number?’

She nodded again, fumbled at the telephone pad and dialled. He could hear the ringing tone. She pointed to her cheek. The police station answered.

‘Awo,’ she said. ‘Poweese?’

There was a pause. Troy could hear the plod on the other end saying, ‘What?’

‘Poweese. Ish Bwenda Bwock. Geosh Jeshll’s Shecetwy.’

She held the phone out to Troy.

‘They can’t unnershtann me. Bin to dennish.’

He took it from her.

‘This is Chief Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard. Get over to 23 Railway Cuttings at once. I’ve just found George Jessel dead.’

There was a whumphf as Brenda Brock fell into her chair. Troy slammed the phone down, took her head and pressed it down between her knees. At least, thank God, she wasn’t screaming. In
less than a minute she raised her head, pale and tearful, looked him in the eyes and said, ‘No kiddin’?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No kidding.’

He left her. Went back into Jessel’s office. The top drawer on Jessel’s side of the desk was open a couple of inches. A sheaf of papers peeped out invitingly at him. He pulled them
out. A couple of dozen pages stapled together in two lots—Cockerell’s tax returns for the last five years. So, he meant to show them to him after all. He stuffed them into his inside
pocket, and looked around. There was no sign of violence. Jessel was slumped, as though he had suddenly snapped at the shoulders and the knees like a puppet whose strings had been cut. There were
five nud ends in the ashtray. Having seen the way the man chainsmoked, that was probably representative of the first half-hour of the working day. He was kicking himself hard. The arrogance of
‘letting him marinade overnight’ came home to him. He’d had his chance and he’d lost it. The cheap detective’s ploy of waiting half an hour before showing up, just to
string him out. He’d had a second chance and he’d lost it. All in all he’d made an utter balls-up of the business, and any minute now he’d have to face the local plod and
pretend he was playing by the book. It would not be pleasant.

He heard footsteps on the stairs, took a last look around the room and darted back into the outer office.

Brenda Brock was staring down into the cutting, crying silently, her mascara dribbling across her swollen, hamster cheeks.

A burly man, overdressed for the weather in a mackintosh and trilby, appeared in the doorway.

‘Warriss, Station Inspector,’ he said bluntly, staring hard at Troy. ‘Now—who the bloody hell are you?’

Troy recited name and rank and produced his warrant card.

‘Don’t be going anywhere,’ Warriss said. ‘I’ll be wanting to talk to you, sir.’

The inflection on the ‘sir’ safely expressed a mixture of anger and contempt. A younger man, in his late twenties, appeared on the landing.

‘Detective Sergeant Godbehere,’ said Warriss. ‘My scene-of-crime man. We’ve the big boys with us today, Raymond. Chief Inspector Troy of the Yard, would you
believe?’

He turned to Troy, utterly unintimidated by rank.

‘In there, is he?’

‘Yes,’ said Troy.

Warriss and Godbehere left him with Brenda. Five minutes later, Warriss came back alone.

‘You’ve touched nothing?’ he asked.

‘Of course not,’ Troy lied.

‘And the lass?’

‘She hasn’t been in there.’

Another clumping on the stairs produced another large man in mackintosh and trilby. This one clutched a doctor’s bag. Obviously the County Police Surgeon.

He nodded in Troy’s direction, and greeted Warriss with a simple ‘Harold.’

‘In there, is he? Grim reaper finally got ’im? Silly bugger.’

He lumbered off across the landing.

Troy heard him say, ‘Well now, Ray me lad, what have we got here? Oh dearie, dearie me.’

Troy’s eyes were on the door, following the doctor, in his mind’s eye following the routine he would now go through. Warriss’s voice cut through, pulled him sharply back.

‘A word with you, Mr Troy. Outside, if you wouldn’t mind.’

He led off down the stairs. Troy looked at Brenda Brock. Beautiful green eyes looked pleadingly back at him, but whatever the plea, he could not meet it. He followed Warriss. At the turn in the
stairs he passed an elderly woman in a flowered bri-nylon overall, dusting the landing windowsill.

Outside Warriss waited, an elbow propped on the embankment wall—a presumptive posture of might and right. Troy was about to be bollocked by a man ten years his elder, a rank his junior,
and he hadn’t a leg to stand on.

‘Tell me,’ Warriss began, ‘does the word protocol mean anything to you, or are all you young buggers down in London ignorant clever dicks?’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘You’d bloody well better be. How long have you been on my patch?’

‘Only since yesterday morning.’

‘And what interest does the Yard have in George Jessel that it did not see fit to share with the local force?’

‘Nothing. Jessel was not the object of my investigation.’

A light of sheer pleasure came into Warriss’s bloodshot eyes. The glint of revelation.

‘My God. My God! You’re here for Arnold Cockerell, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re with the Branch?’

‘No. As a matter of fact I run the Murder Squad.’

Warriss was not impressed.

‘Is that so? Who’s been murdered, then?’

‘Cockerell.’

‘News to me. Last I heard the Russkis had got him. We do get the news up here, y’know. We’re not all brown ale and whippets.’

‘I was asked to look into the disappearance and possible death of Commander Cockerell.’

‘I see,’ Warriss mused. ‘And you don’t think your first port of call might have been the local nick?’

‘I’ve said I’m sorry.’

The same glint appeared in Warriss’s eyes—the same smug satisfaction in his own powers of deduction.

‘It was her, wasn’t it? The wife. She dragged you up here, didn’t she. The bitch, she never trusted me. I’m handling Arnold Cockerell’s disappearance, not the
bloody Yard!’

He tapped his own chest with a stubby index finger. His voice rose. He was shouting, now. Not the faintest shred of pretence of respect for rank.

‘It’s my case, Mr Troy! The matter was reported to my nick, to me personally. I’m in charge of the investigation. Dammit, I’ve known Cockerell ten years or more. He was a
friend! You want to carry on an investigation on my patch, you go through me!’

A convenient express roared through the cutting, southbound, and shrouded them in smoke and steam. As the air cleared Troy tried the only ploy left to him. He looked Warriss clearly in the eyes
and put on his best no-nonsense voice.

‘However. There is now a second case. Murder is my business. George Jessel’s murder will be my business.’

Warriss laughed. Troy was expecting another tirade, and the man laughed.

‘Murder? George Jessel? We’ll see about that.’

He pointed off towards the door of the building behind Troy. The Police Surgeon was emerging, his bag half-open, the rubber tail of a stethoscope dangling from it. He held out his hand to Troy.
Troy shook it. It was the first semblance of good manners he’d seen so far.

‘Jewel,’ the man said. ‘Joe Jewel. County Police Surgeon.’

Before Troy could say a word Warriss cut in sharply.

‘Whatever you’re thinking, don’t say it. There’s not a joke about Jewel and Warriss we haven’t heard. So just save your breath.’

One would think, thought Troy, that to have the same name as the most famous pair of music hall comedians in the land might be some incentive to behave less like a clown. However, he knew the
thought would be wasted if uttered.

‘Well,’ Warriss said to Jewel. ‘Am I right?’

‘Oh aye. His heart. Finally gave out.’

‘You’ll sign then?’

‘Oh aye. Open and shut.’

Warriss seemed almost to grin at Troy. A silent, smirky ‘I told you so.’

‘I don’t want to interrupt the smooth working of an efficient team,’ Troy said, ‘but when a man is found dead in suspicious circumstances, it isn’t open and
shut.’

Warriss seemed not have switched on his patent sarcasm detector and let his other half answer.

‘Oh, believe me, Mr Troy. It is. Y’see. Being a Police Surgeon in this neck o’ the woods isn’t full time. There isn’t the call. We don’t get the bodies.
I’m a GP most of the time. So happens George was a patient of mine. He’d chainsmoked for forty-five years, he swigged scotch like it was Tizer, he’d got a heart about as strong as
a bathroom sponge and arteries as hard as treacle toffee. Believe me, Mr Troy, this is natural causes. He died of a massive, and entirely expected, heart attack. And I’ve no qualms about
signing his death certificate.’

Warriss found his twopenn’orth.

‘The only thing suspicious is the fact that you’re here. And you’ve already said you weren’t investigating Jessel, so that’s that.’

‘I want a post mortem and I want the matter reported to the coroner,’ said Troy, softly and emphatically. ‘If you do not go through the motions now and of your own volition, I
will call the Met Commissioner and your Chief Constable and I will report the pair of you for obstructing an investigation.’

Jewel looked at Warriss. Warriss looked at Jewel. A practised double-take.

‘You London shites are all the same,’ Warriss snarled. ‘You think you can come up here and—’

‘Just do it!’

Warriss eased his elbow off the wall. For a second Troy thought he was going to hit him. Then a uniformed constable came dashing down the alley.

‘Langley Mill on the phone, boss. Urgent.’

Warriss worked his arm vigorously. He was not going to hit his superior officer. He had lounged so long in his posture of arrogance that the nerve in his elbow had gone to sleep. But his face
was red and his voice was hoarse. If only the wit could be found he would surely have flung a
bon mot
or a clever insult at Troy.

‘Cunt,’ he said, trying his best. ‘You’ll get your PM, but if you’re still on my patch tomorrow you report into the nick, and that goes for every day you stay.
Sir!’

He stomped off down the alley. Jewel shrugged a little. Closed the clasp on his bag.

‘It’ll be in the post, laddie. But you’re wrong. You’ll see.’

He followed Warriss. The cleaning woman in the flowered overall appeared at the threshold of number 23, shaking her yellow duster. Troy approached her.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Why, what yer done?’

‘I’d just like to ask you a few questions.’

‘Ask away, me duck.’

It seemed to Troy that the gap between the local argot and received pronunciation was considerable, but he would endeavour.

‘Do you clean the whole building—all the offices?’

‘Ah do.’

‘Mr Jessel’s office?’

‘Oh aye. Very partickler is Mr Jessel. Every morning, quart to nine.’

‘I see,’ said Troy. ‘And you didn’t see anyone come in between then and ten o’clock?’

‘No. Only Mr Jessel. He came in about quarter past. Then ah took me tea-break, like. ’Ad a bit o’ snap. Ah were back in afe an ’our. Ah saw thee come in. Then young
Brenda not five minutes later.’

‘And you cleaned Mr Jessel’s office.’

‘Ah just said ah did. Cleaned and polished every mornin’, same time.’

Troy shot up the stairs, praying silently that Detective Sergeant Godbehere had more brains than his
boss.

He found him, sitting on the chair he had sat on himself the day before, reading the
Daily Mirror.
He was tall, slim, and when he looked up at Troy’s entrance seemed to have a
mercifully intelligent look about him. He had had the decency to drape a sheet across the late George Jessel.