The man frowned and hesitated before pulling up the chair. ‘Err . . . no, I won’t, if it’s all the same to you.’
Sparks replaced the cap on the Teacher’s. ‘I always thought you chaps started at dawn,’ he joshed. ‘Now, how is he? He’s used to receiving a stray right hook or two, so he needn’t take a week off because of a poke with a truncheon.’ Sparks smiled.
The doctor looked baffled. ‘I’m sorry, but who are you talking about?’
‘Detective Constable Kenton, champion boxer. I assume that’s why you’re here?’
‘No, no, Chief Sparks.’ The doctor grimaced. ‘I’m after your birdwatching inspector.’
‘Ha!’ Sparks boomed. The Scotch had made him rather jolly. ‘I fear you have the wrong police station – we have no one fitting that description here!’
‘Detective Inspector Nicholas Lowry – he’s CID, I believe.’
‘Why, yes, but—’
‘It’s about his wife. I’m in love with his wife.’ And with that, the doctor put his head in his hands and sobbed.
‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ Chief Sparks slumped at the desk, stunned. ‘He’s become a bloody twitcher.’
-60-
9.50 a.m., Friday, Abbey Fields, Military Police HQ
Oldham sat at the piano, his back to Lowry as he entered the captain’s office. The DI had little knowledge of classical works but, whatever the piece, it was pleasant on the ear.
‘Very nice, captain.’
‘Ah, Detective Inspector Lowry, I wondered when you might show,’ he remarked over his shoulder.
‘Were you expecting me?’
‘Yes, I figured it was your turn this time.’
‘This time?’
‘As opposed to your hot-headed chief, hungry for a collar.’
Lowry settled into the leather chesterfield. He was in no hurry. The piano playing ceased, and Oldham brought the lid down gently. Rising, he asked, ‘Sherry?’ It was a bit early in the day, but it had been a long week for them both.
‘Love one – thank you.’
Oldham placed a coaster neatly on the edge of the antique octagonal table next to Lowry before handing him a crystal schooner. Here was a precise man who would not tolerate disorder, or untidiness, in any shape or form.
‘Of course, you won’t be able to prove anything.’
‘Of course,’ Lowry agreed, and swallowed the fino in one. He could drink this forever. ‘But an admission would be sporting on your part.’
‘Sporting? As in “a sporting chance?” That has no meaning for me, inspector. There are rules and regulations; a code of practice. That is my law, the army’s law. Our jobs are not dissimilar.’
Lowry made for the decanter and helped himself. ‘Yes, of course. But your rules fall within my community, and when people get hurt, then it’s my concern.’
‘Are you seriously telling me you’ve never had to bend your own regulations for the good of the whole –’ a slight pulse became visible at Oldham’s temple – ‘such as when you see the fabric of your community under threat?’
‘I’m not doubting your intentions,’ Lowry said, meeting his gaze, ‘but I need to hear your account, and then we’ll say no more about it.’ He was careful in his phrasing – ‘account’, rather than ‘confession’.
‘Very well.’ Oldham clasped his fingers behind his back and stood behind the large desk, perhaps to feel in command. ‘In Germany, a number of men were caught dealing in illegal substances. Corporal Frederick Cowley was under surveillance long before he left the army, and the German police kept an eye on him following his exit from the forces. It was they who alerted me to the drug trafficking. A new type of recreational drug was being made in central Europe – as I’m sure you’re aware, it was a German who invented LSD. Anyway, we intercepted correspondence from Cowley to Daley.’
‘So why not arrest them?’
‘We made a deal with the German police to catch them – we knew who and when but not where, which made it difficult; we had to follow them, and civilian clothes disguise a military policeman only up to a point. When Daley and Jones paused in the high street outside a hotel, a civilian told them they were being watched, and that’s when—’
‘When they ran for it.’ Thanks to a shifty Tony Pond, who clocked the military police surveillance.
‘Correct. And nobody was more surprised at the outcome than me. Whether they fell or jumped, I have no idea.’ He sat, elbows on the desk, fingertips now forming a triangle. Lowry waited for more.
‘The unit in pursuit reached the bottom of the hill but, on hearing cries of pain, retreated. There’s little more to say, other than that we expected them to make a deal on New Year’s Eve. When they didn’t, we thought they’d slipped through our fingers. We didn’t know about the hold-up with the delivery.’
‘Why was Quinn out of the picture?’
‘Ah, well, Corporal Quinn is not as daft as he makes out. He smelt a rat, so we had to detain him just to make sure he understood on which side his bread was buttered.’
‘I see. So that would explain why he was rather fractious the following night. And why you turned up in person following the disturbances.’
‘Yes, it all grew rather emotional.’
‘I’m surprised you let him out again.’
‘It wouldn’t do not to, having pulled Jones from your clutches . . . and though, ostensibly, Quinn may appear a loose cannon, he follows orders. After a quiet word, we let him out, needing eyes and ears on the street, given what subsequently happened at Greenstead.’
‘We’ll get to that in a minute,’ Lowry said, savouring the fino.
For the first time, everything slotted into place. The couriers had arrived late and there was nobody there to receive the shipment with Daley dead, Quinn detained, and Jones AWOL. A picture formed: Derek Stone minding the house, clueless, not sure what to do, with Jennings breathing down his neck, and Philpott making a nuisance of himself.
‘Jones disappearing did raise eyebrows,’ Lowry agreed, ‘but I wrote that off to bureaucracy.’
‘And it very easily can be. Best bet, though – young Jones would have cracked under pressure. Knowing Daley had died, the cat would be out of the bag in no time that the military police had chased his friend to his death.’
There, he’d said it.
‘So where is he really?’
‘Oh, he really is Falklands-bound.’
Lowry was satisfied with Oldham’s frankness; the conversation would go no further.
‘And is it true that a policeman was responsible for the murders?’
‘Indirectly, yes.’
‘What a state of affairs,’ Oldham said without conviction, leaving the desk and helping himself to a refill.
‘Of course, had Daley, Jones and Quinn been at the house to collect, two lives may have been spared,’ Lowry said. Freddie Cowley would still have been doomed, but Lowry believed the other two would have lived.
‘Who knows, inspector?’ The captain returned to the piano. ‘And if there’d been no fog, half the armed forces would be high as a kite. It’s still my view that it was the involvement of civilians that caused bloodshed at Beaumont Terrace.’ Oldham placed the sherry glass delicately on the piano, assuming the matter closed, and resumed playing.
And then Lowry made his final move.
‘Of course, you know why it ended that way, with two men dead?’ The piano stopped as abruptly as it had started.
‘I have not the faintest idea, nor do I care.’
‘But you do know the drugs were never recovered.’
The captain turned on the stool with an impressive air of polished patience.
Lowry continued. ‘On Saturday night, Jamie Philpott runs into Corporal Quinn at the other end of town, having visited Beaumont Terrace. A conversation takes place before the
fight. Quinn discovers the whereabouts of the shipment and passes the information on.’ Lowry paused, purposely not saying where. ‘The next evening, while the occupants are out to fetch a curry, the rucksacks disappear from Beaumont Terrace. Philpott returns to discover this and, after nearly two days observing these hopeless tossers, finally cracks and kills the remaining two men, thinking he’s been shafted.’
‘I see,’ Oldham said. ‘And the drugs . . . ?’
‘Taken out of circulation, destroyed.’
‘Hmm, for the best, wouldn’t you say?’ He looked on archly, wanting to confirm they were on the same page.
Lowry nodded. ‘The marshes?’
‘It should be easy to move about unseen on one’s own territory, but it appears that the military are not the only ones to use binoculars.’ He stood and picked up a gold cigarette case from the piano. ‘That men have time to traipse about looking at birds.’ He winced as he lit the cigarette. ‘I mean, can you believe it?’
‘Doesn’t bear thinking about.’ Lowry couldn’t help but smile. Oldham’s men had obviously stumbled across Doug Young, looking for his peregrines, while trying to dispose of the drugs. Two large rucksacks of amphetamines couldn’t just be binned – they’d obviously had to have been parked in the hut, until Doug and his birds had gone. Oldham passed the cigarette case.
‘Can I be frank?’ he said, proffering a lighter.
‘Please.’
‘I must admit, I was in hot water.’ He smiled for the first time. ‘Heavens, I’d clean forgotten we’d been out on the marshes taking pot shots before Christmas – and there’s my name chalked up for all to see. Have to hand it to you chaps, how the devil did you catch on to the ranges?’
Too coy to admit to being one of those who traipsed about looking at birds, Lowry said, ‘We had a telephone number we thought might be a military field line, which put you in the frame. But if it was, it was incomplete, and the brigadier—’
‘Do you have it on you? May I?’
Lowry reached inside his suit pocket. ‘Be my guest.’
‘Thank you, and talking of the brigadier, it goes without saying he’s completely in the dark about the aforementioned situation.’ Oldham scrutinized the scrap of paper. ‘This is indeed a phone number.’
‘Oh, really? We assumed there must be a number missing at the end, but we tried every permutation and came up with nothing.’
‘There is indeed a number missing, but it’ll be in the middle – an old army trick. There should also be a zero at the front for the international code. For, correct me if I’m wrong, but this is a German phone number.’
Cowley’s contact number in Germany, of course. Less a digit, should it fall into the wrong hands – in this case, the hapless brother. The contact would be out there now, in Europe, wondering what the hell had happened. Lowry tipped what remained of his sherry down his throat. That was for someone else to worry about. He left the number with Oldham, suggesting he may wish to make inquiries, and said goodbye. Lowry knew the system well enough to know that no good would come of divulging what he’d confirmed this morning. Besides, he rather liked the captain; he was a brave and principled man. He rose. A swift trip to Colchester General to check on the wounded Kenton, then . . . then what? Jacqui wouldn’t be up until five. He was determined to have it out with her; he’d thought it through overnight. He’d been compromised, and refused to accept that sort of behaviour. And Matthew; he needed to talk to his son. That bruising . . . So, in the meantime, what? Watching the U’s run around Layer Road with Sparks? It would be a break, and maybe go some way to reassure the station chief that Lowry wasn’t losing the plot completely.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Jon Riley, Felicity Blunt, Sarah Neal, Deborah Treisman, Sarah Castleton, David Shelley, Andreas Campomar, Natasha Fairweather, Richard Arcus, Sarah Day, Penelope Price, Mike Bulmer-Jones, Steve Moore, Alan Munson, Clare Worland, James Oldham, Katie Gurbutt.
Henry James, Blackwater
(Series: # )
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