The Devil's Home on Leave (Factory 2) Read online

  I went out to the news-stand opposite the Factory and bought a Recorder. Cryer had done his work well. On page one the headline, Plastic Bag Nightmare, marched across the sheet with the stiff majesty of tombstones. It came hard through the print that what Cryer had seen with me in that warehouse had hit him where he lived.

  I dialled Cryer. ‘They pleased with you over there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t sound too happy.’

  ‘I’ve been having bad dreams.’

  ‘Yes, the bags were enough to give anyone a jolt,’ I said, ‘no matter how hard-boiled he thinks he is.’

  ‘Was that meant to be funny?’

  ‘No, I was talking about myself. Now listen. If anyone contacts you over the story, you let me know straight away. It doesn’t matter if it sounds far out.’

  ‘Yes, sure. Got any ideas?’

  ‘Just one so far. It’s guesswork, but I’ve got to start somewhere.’

  ‘Anything on the humane killer angle?’

  ‘How the hell did you hear about that?’

  ‘I’ve got a friend in the lab.’

  ‘You pick useful friends,’ I said. ‘OK, well, keep in touch.’

  Next I rang the internal number upstairs.

  ‘Where have you been, for Christ’s sake?’ said the voice. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all morning.’

  ‘I was in bed asleep for once.’

  ‘Well, what the hell did you take that baby wonder from Boy’s Own Paper up there with you for?’

  ‘Because I wanted someone who was prepared to think for himself,’ I said, ‘not some world-weary hack. I took Cryer up with me because I got the idea he could think, print what he thought, and make a good job of the story. All of which he did.’

  ‘You’d no right whatever to let them offer a five thousand pound reward for information without clearing it with me first - none at all! The whole thing was a carve-up thanks to you. When television and all the rest of the mob got round there everyone had gone, no spokesman, not even a copper on the door – the whole place shut up like a clam and not a plastic bag to be seen!’

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘I fixed it like that. I just wanted the one story in the one big circulation daily that every villain reads. That way the hot tip, if there is one, will go to the one man who covered the bags with me. I got the story out where I wanted it out, the way I wanted it out.’

  ‘I don’t care what you wanted!’

  ‘Well, that makes it tricky,’ I said, ‘because it’s my case unless you want to take me off it.’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish, sergeant. What I mean is, a man like Bowman wouldn’t have handled it like that at all.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘well, our methods are quite different.’

  ‘You’ve made a completely obscure murder look like a national flap.’

  ‘Who knows but it might turn out to be one?’ I said. ‘I know the public are pretty jaded, but this is nasty enough to make even them sit up. Besides, slickly done like this was, it could be connected to something else – a well-buried connection. It’s unlikely, but it does happen. And another thing – no murder’s completely obscure. Luckily. Otherwise, we’d never solve any of them.’

  ‘Are you coming the acid with me, sergeant?’

  ‘I don’t frankly know,’ I said, with a rare burst of honesty, ‘but I have got an idea.’

  ‘What idea?’

  ‘How many people have we got on file, professionals, most like with form, that might use a humane killer on a wet job?’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right,’ said the voice, ‘I’ve just read the lab report. It’s those things they use on cows, knackered horses etcetera. They work the same as an air pistol, don’t they? You can put them in your pocket. Yes, my daughter-in-law’s got one down on her farm in Somerset.’

  ‘That’s the gadget. You hold it against a head of some kind, then you pull the trigger and it fires a fucking great nail through your brain.’

  ‘Mind your language, will you, sergeant?’ The voice thought for a while and added: ‘Still, it’s a remarkable choice of weapon, that.’

  ‘It was certainly remarkable for the victim.’

  ‘We don’t know who that was yet, do we?’

  ‘Not yet. But we will. I see it as a question of who’s vanished. It won’t be just anyone. It must be someone who someone else thought it worth spending money on to help the vanishing trick along. I’m having everyone likely checked in a quiet way.’

  ‘Yes, good,’ said the voice. ‘You’re cheeky, sergeant, but you know what you’re doing, I’ll say that for you.’ It added: ‘Yes, a humane killer. Stands out, that does. I can’t think of a single killing done with one of those, not in my experience. It kind of sticks in your mind.’

  ‘You could certainly say that.’

  ‘Just keep on being funny, sergeant.’

  ‘I’m not being funny.’

  ‘Still, I can’t think of anybody,’ the voice reflected.

  ‘Well, I’ve got a feeling I can,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a name in my mind that I can’t seem to get out again. Now I know it sounds far out, but how about McGruder? You remember – the ex-paratrooper who did bird for murdering a fellow corporal? When he’s around they call him Bully on the manor, because that’s the way Billy comes out with his accent; he’s out of Ulster.’

  ‘Yes, we thought he’d done Wally Wetherby, the supergrass, only the DPP’s office decided there wasn’t the evidence.’

  ‘Yes, Wetherby,’ I said. ‘He grassed Darkie Cole over that big bullion job at Heathrow, and then he was in trouble with Pat Hawes too, down to grassing. Made himself a fortune.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the voice. ‘We reckoned it was McGruder who came up to Wetherby in that Soho pub there, what’s it called, the Norman Arms, that’s right, and gave it to him straight through the eye with a sailmaker’s needle while they were having a drink at the bar. No, I’m wrong, it wasn’t the Norman Arms. It was that other pub in Greek Street, The Case Is Altered. The Norman’s in Frith Street, I’m always getting those two streets muddled up, they look almost identical.’

  ‘The case was certainly altered for Wetherby,’ I said. ‘But not for the killer. The pub was practically empty at the time, it was only ten to six, and no one would identify McGruder. Besides, he had an alibi for the time in question. Five people swore he’d been at their place drinking, and we could not crack it.’

  ‘But I see what you’re driving at,’ said the voice. ‘Four-inch needle – another far-out weapon.’

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘and his army past. He was a commando really.’

  ‘They should never have let him sign on.’

  ‘He was all right as long as they pointed him in the right direction.’

  ‘A bit too good, I remember from his trial.’

  ‘Yes, and then he was choked at having to do seven like that,’ I said. ‘It sort of made him moody and liable to go off the rails some more. It’s what a lot of bird does to people, though he should have done twenty for Brownlow, and Christ only knows why he didn’t.’

  ‘That was his army record,’ said the voice. It sighed. ‘They certainly taught him to kill all right.’

  ‘Yes, well, after he came out,’ I said, ‘and did the Wetherby contract for Cole, well then, he just disappeared, and we’ve had a nice long rest from him this side of the Channel. Still, he must have been doing something, somewhere.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said the voice. ‘I don’t see him just gardening.’

  ‘And he does like money,’ I said. ‘That’s another thing came out at his trial. And whoever this man over at Rotherhithe may have been, somebody paid a big whack of it to have him topped, judging by the sweet tidy way it was done.’

  ‘Well, yes, let’s say we take an interest in McGruder, just as a start,’ said the voice, ‘where do you think he might have been for the last few years or so?’

  ‘Hard to say at this stage,’ I told him, ‘and
silly to guess, but why not foreign armies? He’s trained, McGruder. He’d do anything for money. What? Kill? Look at his record. Look at Wetherby, if that was McGruder. The man kills, snap, like that; he’s a dangerous bastard, he’s like a silencer screwed to a pistol. And if he’s around, I think he ought to be definitely checked out – nudged on principle.’

  ‘Yes, foreign armies,’ mused the voice, ‘a mercenary, yes, why not? Plenty of scope for a man like that. No questions asked of a trained man – Africa, the Middle East, Central America – of course, if the money’s right.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘money. In the transcript of the Brownlow trial it came out that when the SIB went through his pay-book and private bank account he was worth nine thousand quid – not bad for an army corporal.’

  ‘I wonder how he laid hold of all that?’

  ‘I reckon he pulled a job or two when he was on leave,’ I said. ‘Anyway, what we do know is, he never spent any money if he could help it. He was a man wouldn’t give you the skin off his shit – he was noted for it.’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said the voice, ‘it could be promising. Any other names occur to you?’

  ‘Yes, three,’ I said, ‘but the trouble is, they’re so obvious that I don’t think they fit. They’ve each of them done a contract, but two of them used a shooter, and the third split the bloke’s head open with an axe. They’re none of them into anything sophisticated; you’d have to write humane killer down for them in block caps before they even understood what the adjective meant. Also, unlike McGruder, none of them have ever been cooks or butchers’ assistants. The only thing they’ve got in common with McGruder is that they all worked for hard villains. But that’s all – otherwise they’re all three as thick as planks bolted together. None of them’d ever have had the bottle to take the time that was taken over this job. They’d none of them ever have made corporal in a parachute regiment either. The competition in there, it’s ferocious. You know Frank Ballard – that’s right, Inspector Ballard who was shot – he was in them. Of course, the man we want could be someone brand new, but I don’t think so; villains don’t like using people that’ve just come in from the street. I can pick the others up and have a go if you like, but I don’t think it’s worth while – not yet anyway. I’d rather start straight off on McGruder.’

  ‘I keep going back to the weapon that was used,’ droned the voice. ‘Humane killer. No sound. No serial number. Use it and throw it away.’

  ‘Yes, in the river, why not?’ I said. ‘It was only twenty-odd feet away – that’s why I reckon they picked the place. As for who the victim was, I might even know his name by tomorrow; I’m into it hard. I know you don’t like what I did about the Recorder, but it could be a lot of help.’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said the voice. It added: ‘Depending on who the dead man turns out to be, if it was someone important, or even well placed in villains’ circles, then the whole of this thing could go off with a big bang.’

  ‘Well, that suits me,’ I said, ‘because if there are going to be any more headlines in it, it certainly won’t be a case for A14 any more; we can hand it back to Serious Crimes. There’s the death of what looks like a derelict out at Shepherd’s Bush that’s just come in, but Sergeant Thompson can’t handle it, he’s away sick.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said the voice, ‘you just concentrate on these bags. And don’t worry about the headlines. I’ll handle that side of it; you’ve done more than enough damage.’ It added: ‘Cooking the man, now. I keep coming back to that too. Cooking. The weapon. What trademarks!’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The older you grow, the madder you get – if you started out mad.’

  ‘McGruder? Mad, do you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do think. Men hate each other. They hit each other. They kill each other. But nobody garrottes a man, like he did that soldier, not for a chance remark. And no one but a downright nut stabs a man through the eye with a needle – not even for money. I’m assuming McGruder did kill Wetherby, of course.’ I added: ‘Mind, madness can be handy in solving a case. It leaves improbable traces. The harder your man tries to rub out the evidence of his madness, the clearer it becomes. It’s like a child wetting its bed. It can dry it right through the night, but the stain’s worse still in the morning.’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said the voice. ‘Get going with McGruder – we’ve nothing to lose and we’ve got to start somewhere.’

  ‘If there is a link it’s soon established,’ I said, ‘one way or the other. If McGruder’s not in the country, that’s the end of it. But if he is, I’m in favour of a chat with him anyway, no hard feelings. And I think we’ll find he is in the country; my instinct is that this killing’s got McGruder written all over it; I can’t think of anyone else to fit.’

  ‘That’s settled, then,’ said the voice, ‘keep in touch with me over it.’ It added: ‘God, I remember that Wetherby case now all right. He put nine men in jail, didn’t he?’ The voice sighed. ‘What a waste of a well-nourished little plant Wetherby was!’

  ‘Yes, it must have been very nasty,’ I said, ‘the two of them side by side in that near-empty bar and then the killer strikes and Wetherby claps his hand to his eye – but it’s just a reflex, he’s as dead as yesterday, and the killer got away through the back of the boozer and over the wall into that alley there behind the Pillars of Hercules, what’s the name of it? You know, where the bookshop is.’

  ‘Yes, and strange,’ said the voice, ‘how the governor and his barman remembered some things in every detail. Yet could either of them identify the assailant? Or the victim, even? No, they could not.’

  ‘Well, it’s not strange really,’ I said, ‘they’d got their health to consider.’

  ‘Serious Crimes had a dreadful time with that one before we dropped it for lack of evidence,’ said the voice. ‘I remember all that now. Bowman, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Well, if it wasn’t,’ I said, ‘it might well have been.’

  ‘I won’t have you criticizing your superior officers, do you understand?’

  I said I understood fine, and we rang off.

  16

  ‘Billy McGruder?’ I said through the door.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘It’s me. Open up.’

  I wouldn’t have got onto McGruder that fast if it hadn’t been for Cryer over in Fleet Street. He rang me and said: ‘I may have got hold of someone down to those bags. He read the story and phoned in.’

  ‘Terrific!’ I said. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Bloke from Peckham way; I met him in the Gunners over at Clerkenwell. He wants to meet you – well, that’s what he says now, anyway. He wasn’t keen at first. What he wanted at first was to do everything through me, cop for the five long ones, and have me pass his information on to you.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that at all,’ I said. ‘What is he. A grass?’

  ‘That’s right. I met him once before, over the Mayfield robbery.’

  ‘Well, there’s always a catch over money,’ I said, ‘if you’re a grass. The catch is, he has to talk to the law. He must know that.’

  ‘Well, what I do know,’ said Cryer, ‘is he’s bloody frightened to talk. But the offer of five thousand was too much for him.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Smitty, they call him. Duck’s arse short, fair hair, damaged upper lip, scar across it.’

  ‘I know him, thirty-odd, quite new in the business. OK. Where do I meet him?’

  ‘The Marquis of Darlington, that’s his boozer.’

  ‘I know the Marquis,’ I said. ‘Old Kent Road. And thanks. Nice one, Tom, well done.’

  ‘He says he may have this name for you.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ I said, ‘and I mean that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bank on it, he’s a born liar.’

  ‘What grass isn’t?’ I said. ‘But they’re bright enough to know that in their game only the truth pays out. No play, no pay. And don’t you worry, I know how t
o shell a soft-boiled egg.’

  ‘Evening, Smitty.’

  ‘Who are you?’ He came on hard, sprawling against the bar like a big man. They always feel they have to do that so as to look less like what they are.

  I sat on the stool next to him and ordered us both a pint. Then I slipped out my warrant card so that only he could see it and said: ‘This is to introduce us, OK?’

  He swallowed. ‘Christ,’ he muttered, ‘you was quick. You get onto me through Cryer?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘You must have been expecting me, seeing you’re trying to get your foot in with the newspaper world again.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but you people are always a shock just the same. Anyway, as long as it ain’t a John Bull.’

  I looked him over. ‘You could probably just do with one,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘It must be coming up to your time to paint a few more walls over at Wandsworth. What was it last time? Ripping off that wholesale bra showroom up in Great Portland Street, wasn’t it?’

  He choked on his beer; I thought he was going to start crying.

  ‘I’m clean!’ he hissed. ‘Clean, do you hear?’

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘but watch your step and don’t give me any shit. Now, what we’re here to talk about is someone who went on a macabre shopping spree and left five Waitrose shopping bags at a warehouse in Rotherhithe – what do you know about it?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he muttered, ‘why don’t we go over to that empty table in the corner, casual like?’

  We did that. The door of the pub stood open. It was light still for April – an evening of swiftly fading sunshine and a feeling in the air like the threat of a downpour. The place was filling up fast.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said when we were settled, ‘I can’t decide. I don’t really want to talk to you – anyway, not in a boozer.’

  ‘It was your choice for the meet, this place,’ I said, ‘and maybe this will help you make up your mind.’ I took out a ton, folded small in twenties, and pushed it to him under the ashtray.