Child's Play

Chapter 9

Deputy Chief Constable Neville Watmough sat in the bar of The Borough Club For Professional Gentlemen and sipped his sherry. This of all places in the world was where he felt most at home, and he didn’t exclude home. Here he was in the true power centre of the city. Only a few yards away sat Councillor Mottram, local magnate and, more importantly, chairman of the Police Committee who would shortly be interviewing him. He had greeted Mottram warmly, as a fellow clubman, but not over-effusively, and made no effort to join the councillor and the young man who was his guest. Mottram, he hoped, would appreciate this refusal to do anything which might smack of canvassing support.

But that he would receive it, he had no doubt. Was he not, after all, known to the man as a respected fellow-member of the Gents, long-time committee man, and soon to be President-elect? He must surely also be regarded as Chief Constable-elect! Everyone knew that Tommy Winter had been demob-happy for nigh on two years and he, Neville Watmough, had been running the show single-handed. He had missed no opportunity of expressing his frank and unqualified belief in police accountability. Liaison with the Police Committee had never been closer and no opportunity had been missed to urge upon its members the high quality of policing in mid-Yorkshire, its smooth traffic flow, its efficient administration, even its above-average detection rate. If you want to see my memorial, look around you! thought Watmough grandiloquently.

And you need not look too far either. It was one of his most laudatory though least advertised triumphs that when some ill-advised and irresponsible members had proposed Dalziel for the Gents, Watmough had blackballed him without a second thought.

Here perhaps was the last safe place. Here he could sit in peace, contemplating the sunlit heights of a political future as he waited for the guest who was going to help to pilot him there.

That guest entered the bar at that moment, a small dark man in his mid-thirties, his every movement eloquent of that restless energy which was his most obvious characteristic.

‘Neville! There you are!’

‘Ike! Nice to see you again.’

Ike Ogilby, editor of the Sunday Challenger, shook Watmough’s hand warmly, then gestured to the young man who had followed him rather diffidently into the room.

‘Neville, I hope you don’t mind, but I brought one of my bright young things to meet you. Henry Vollans, Neville Watmough, Deputy Chief Constable and soon to be Chief, we all hope!’

Casting an anxious look towards the chairman of the Police Committee who happily seemed not to have heard this perhaps over-confident assertion, Watmough shook the young man’s hand.

‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said. ‘Ike, your usual? Mr Vollans, you’ll join us?’

‘No, really. I was just going to be in the area seeing a colleague on the Evening Post this lunchtime and Mr Ogilby thought I should meet you. I’ve got to dash now.’

‘See you back at the factory, Henry,’ said Ogilby.

‘Yes, sir. It’ll probably be late. I’m going back via Ilkley, remember.’

‘Yes, fine. Cheers.’

Vollans left. Watmough ordered Ogilby a Scotch and soda.

‘Pleasant young chap,’ he said. ‘Grooming him for the big time, are we?’

‘Not particularly,’ smiled Ogilby. ‘I just like to put my boys in direct touch with the real power sources wherever I can. Never know when your name might come in useful. He could be parked on a double yellow at this very moment!’

The two men laughed, but both of them knew that what they were joking about was a basic truth.

Their liaison went back several years. On an official level it was easy to justify on both sides. The Challenger got the news and the Force got the image. Everyone was happy.

But each of the men nursed other, longer-term motives.

For the present, Watmough relied on the paper to give him a good neutral press, giving offence to neither the Arcadian Squirearchy to the North of his area nor to the People’s Republic to the South. But once the Chief’s job was his, then he wouldn’t care who he offended! He intended to become a national figure. Four or five years of pontificating on Law and Order via the media in general and the Challenger in particular would see him ready for the next big step — Westminster!

Ogilby didn’t much mind how Watmough’s career developed. To be going on with, there was a constant stream of inside information which could be more inside still if he made Chief Constable. And if he then ended up in Parliament, well, no journalist ever objected to have a close relationship with an ambitious MP. Even if his dreams came to nothing, Ogilby reckoned there’d still be a nice juicy series of memoirs for the Challenger to serialize. Top Cop Tells All. Watmough would have been surprised to know how closely documented were all the off-the-record juicy bits imparted to Ogilby over the years, ready as an aide-memoire for his chosen ‘ghost’.

Meanwhile they consorted like lovers in a space-capsule, each certain he was on top.

‘Good of you to come so far,’ said Watmough.

‘Not at all. It’s only forty minutes and I wanted to pop into the Post anyway. Besides, I always enjoy eating here.’

Privately Ogilby regarded the Gents as something Dornford Yates might have invented on a bad day or P.G. Wodehouse on a good one, but he lied with the ease of occupational practice.

‘Good. Let’s go through, shall we? Bring your drink.’

They made their way out of the bar and into the long, rather chilly dining-room which had something of the smell of a school refectory.

Here Watmough halted so suddenly that Ogilby got jammed beside him in the doorway.

‘Sorry,’ said the DCC in the voice of one who has drunk and seen the spider. ‘No, George, could we stay up at this end, please?’

This last was to the catering manager who was trying to usher Watmough to his usual privileged window table, but he had no desire whatsoever to sit there today, for at the next table along slumped the huge bulk of Andrew Dalziel.

He looked up now, saw Watmough and waved the lamb chop he had just impaled on his fork.

‘I see the cabaret’s arrived,’ he said to Eden Thackeray.

Thackeray glanced towards Watmough and nodded his head, perhaps in greeting, perhaps in agreement. He was adept at such ambiguity, and he recognized the dangers of both alliance with and opposition to Dalziel.

The two men had known each other professionally for a long time and though superficially they were poles apart, they had discovered in each other a sound core of realism and common sense.

Dalziel emptied his wine glass, Thackeray emptied the bottle of Fleurie into it and waggled it at the caterer, who a moment later advanced with a new one.

‘Right,’ said Dalziel. ‘Now we’ve established that I’m in profit even if I’ve got to tell you to sod off, what is it you want?’

‘I have a problem,’ said Thackeray. ‘Does the name Huby mean anything to you? Gwendoline Huby.’

‘Let’s see,’ said Dalziel. ‘Weren’t she that daft old bird who left her brass to a son who got killed in the war? I read about it in the papers.’

‘That’s the one. Now, the thing is, yesterday a chap actually turned up at my Chambers claiming to be the man.’

‘Oh aye? How much brass is there?’

‘Getting on for a million and a half, depending on the market.’

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Dalziel. ‘With that kind of money I’m surprised you haven’t had queues like the January sales.’

‘Yes. There have, of course, been several quite obviously crank letters. But the thing about this chap is that at first sight he is extremely plausible. And frankly, Dalziel, I find myself in a quandary as to how to proceed.’

Dalziel regarded him steadily.

‘Me too,’ he said.

‘Really?’

‘Aye. Shall I start calling you Thackeray if you call me Dalziel? I don’t mind, but it doesn’t come easy off my tongue.’

Thackeray looked bewildered, then began to smile.

‘Would Eden come any easier, Superintendent?’

‘Andy,’ said Dalziel. ‘Now we’ve got things on a proper friendly basis, see if you can tell us what you want without going all round the houses.’

‘I’m not sure. Let me put it this way. My main concern as Mrs Huby’s solicitor and as executor of her will is to see that her wishes are carried out.

‘Now, this man turns up and claims to be the heir. I am practically certain that he cannot be the heir, yet he has contrived to sow a seed of doubt. It would be easy for me to say to him, no, go away, you are fraudulent unto such time as you prove you are not. I could put all the obstacles of the law in his way and force him to choose between abandoning his claim or setting out on a long, tedious and extremely expensive path to a very doubtful conclusion.’

‘I’m with you,’ said Dalziel. ‘You don’t think that’s your job, right?’

‘My job is to carry out my client’s wishes, and I have serious doubts as to whether that would be the nearest way to doing that.’

‘Bugger me,’ said Dalziel. ‘I never thought I’d hear a lawyer wanting to do what was nearest rather than what was dearest.’

‘I am full of surprises. You’re probably wondering how you can help me, Dalziel — sorry; Andy.’

‘No. I’m wondering how you imagine I can help you,’ said Dalziel with the easy confidence of a man who could without embarrassment reject the appeal of a molested maiden if something important, like opening time, diverted his attention. ‘And while you’re choosing your words, I think I saw there was mum’s trifle on the menu. I’m always in a better mood for a slab of mum’s trifle.’

Meanwhile at the other table, after some preliminary indecision as to whether he should sit with his face towards Dalziel and be continually reminded of his presence, or with his back towards him and risk being stolen upon unawares, Watmough had compromised with a sideways seat and had soon lulled himself into forgetfulness with that most soothing of music, his own harmonic future.

Ogilby contented himself with reassurance and optimistic agreement throughout the brown windsor and well into the steak and kidney pudding. He felt he’d gone quite far enough when Watmough said, ‘Mid-Yorks is a good force and a clean force, and people in the know will give credit where it’s due, Ike. I’ve carried this lot, you know that. Old Tommy Winter’s been demob-happy for two years at least.’

‘Everyone knows you’re a great administrator, Nev,’ said Ogilby.

‘Not just an administrator,’ retorted Watmough. ‘Round here they’ve not forgotten the Pickford case.’

I bet they bloody haven’t! thought Ogilby with an inward groan. The Pickford case had been Watmough’s finest hour. It had happened a few years earlier when Watmough was Assistant Chief Constable in South Yorkshire. A seven-year-old Wakefield girl, Mary Brook, had gone missing. A friend thought she’d seen her getting into a car which might have been a blue Cortina. Four weeks later her body was found in a shallow grave on the moors. Then another girl, this time from Barnsley, went missing in similar circumstances, and at almost the same time, a third child vanished from the small mining town of Burrthorpe only ten miles away. Watmough took charge of the investigation, holding frequent press conferences in which he talked confidently of the modern age of detection and assured his listeners that the answer was already in the new police computer. It was just a matter of waiting for it to come out.

Not long after, a blue Cortina was discovered in a lonely country lane near Doncaster. In it was Donald Pickford, a sales representative from Huddersfield, asphyxiated by exhaust fumes. He had left a rambling incoherent letter expressing horror at what he had been compelled to do. A search of the area revealed the body of the Barnsley girl a quarter of a mile away. No reference was made to Tracy Pedley, the missing Burrthorpe girl, but there was a clear reference to Mary Brook and to another unsolved child-murder in mid-Yorkshire some two years before.

Watmough at his final press conference made no bones about claiming to have solved just about every child-molesting case in the country over the past decade. Dalziel was heard to opine that likely Pickford was Jack the Ripper and had murdered the Princes in the Tower too, but his many enemies regarded this as sour grapes. Watmough was meanwhile flourishing a piece of computer printout at reporters and declaring, ‘Look, here is the man’s name. He knew we were pressing close and took the only way out. This is a triumph for modern detective methods!’

Privately, like many others, Ogilby reckoned that it wasn’t difficult after the event to get any bloody name on a printout. But he already had a vested interest in Watmough, and the media as a whole had had their full quota of bungling halfwits for the week, but were a bit short on heroes. So Watmough got the vote and a month later returned triumphantly to mid-Yorkshire as Deputy Chief Constable.

‘You’ve not got another spectacular murder solution up your sleeve, have you, Nev?’ inquired Ogilby, a touch satirically.

‘No,’ said Watmough, slightly miffed. ‘Prevention’s better than cure. A good modern force is the best deterrent, and that’s what I’ve created.’

‘Indeed yes,’ said Ogilby placatingly. ‘I know you’ve been most eloquent in your arguments for policing that reflects the changes in modern society. Talking of which, how do you feel about homosexuals?’

‘Generally? Well, what I feel is, a man’s entitled to his own beliefs and tastes, as long as they don’t involve breaking the law, of course,’ said Watmough. ‘Personally, I don’t much care for poofters, but I would never let that personal distaste prejudice my judgement on a legal matter, of course.’

‘Of course not,’ said Ogilby.

He paused, quietly savouring the moment, then resumed, ‘But what I really meant, Nev, was — how do you feel about homosexual policemen? I only ask because the Evening Post got rung up the other day inquiring if they’d care to buy a story, about a gay copper in Mid-Yorkshire CID.’

Watmough’s bout of coughing as he choked on his wine drew Dalziel’s attention.

‘He were weaned too early,’ he said in explanation. ‘Now, let me get this straight. You want me to help you check out this man’s credentials? That’s not police work, you know that. Hire a private eye. The estate can bear it.’

‘Despite the television, as you well know, the competent and reliable private eye is a rare bird, hard to find outside Southern California, and more likely to be caged or shot at than assisted by the carabinieri. I need to check Signor Alessandro Pontelli’s background in Florence. I need to know when he left Italy, when he came to this country, where he’s staying, who he’s seen. I need to compare his physical characteristics with any records that exist of Alexander Lomas. All these things can be done swiftly and easily by the police, whereas a poor solicitor …’

He smiled sadly and topped up Dalziel’s Fleurie.

‘It’s the coordinator for Interpol you should’ve asked for lunch, not me,’ said Dalziel. ‘My job’s investigating crime, not running a where-are-they-now agency.’

‘In a sense, this could be classed as a criminal investigation, surely,’ murmured Thackeray.

‘What sense is that?’

‘If this man’s making a fraudulent claim, surely that’s a crime? Personation, forgery, fraud — all of these must be involved?’

‘Mebbe,’ said Dalziel. ‘I’d need better grounds than you’re giving me, though.’

‘Yes. I realize that I shouldn’t have asked. Still I thought, at a personal level perhaps … but never mind. I hope you’ve enjoyed your lunch.’

‘It were grand. I always like it here,’ said Dalziel.

‘Time for a game of snooker after coffee, perhaps? Yes, we really need more members of your calibre, Andy.’

‘Oh aye? There’s at least one bugger doesn’t think that!’

He glowered suspiciously towards Watmough.

‘What? Oh yes. I assure you, the vast majority of the membership thought that blackballing business was a scandal. But what to do? Rules are rules, even when they’re based on a silly and outmoded tradition. Have you ever thought of letting yourself be re-nominated?’

‘I’ve a hard head,’ said Dalziel grimly. ‘And it doesn’t bother me much if someone uses it once as a coconut shy. But after that, I’ve sense enough to keep it down.’

‘I appreciate that. But it seems such a shame. Incidentally, we’ve another rather silly tradition here which allows the President to have in his gift, as it were, a couple of memberships, virtually by invitation. Did you know that?’

‘No.’

‘Yes, it’s so. I’m President-elect, by the way. My term of office starts next month. Andy, I’d be delighted if you’d give serious consideration to accepting my presidential nomination. The way it works is, the new President nominates, the new President-elect seconds, and after that it’s a formality, read straight into the minutes. Indeed, it’s such a formality the President-elect usually signs the forms at the start of his term with no idea who the President may nominate.’

‘You know how to make a man feel wanted,’ grunted Dalziel. ‘Thanks, but I’ll pass.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Thackeray, alarmed. ‘Good Lord, that did sound gratuitously offensive, didn’t it? Unintentional, believe me. No, the point I was about to make is that my President-elect will be your friend Mr Watmough.’

His bland gaze met Dalziel’s shrewd stare. After a while both men began to chuckle, then to laugh.

Dalziel raised his glass and through his chortles said, ‘Cheers! And here’s to Interpol!’

Watmough could see nothing to laugh at and felt his CID Chief’s distant amusement as a personal affront.

‘Of course,’ Ogilby had said, ‘it’s not the kind of thing a local evening paper would run, but if there’s a story there, the Challenger couldn’t ignore it. I thought it only right to warn you, Nev, in view of our special relationship.’

He watched with hidden amusement as Watmough sipped his wine in an effort to lubricate his urbane chuckle. He’s counting how many Sundays he’s got to get through between now and the Board! he told himself.

Two, thought Watmough. Two peaceful Sabbaths, ten tranquil bloody days, that was all he asked. It was one thing to point out the smooth perfections of a well-disciplined Force and say modestly, These are down to me; quite another to appear as the self-advertised controller of a force split by hints of corruption and rumours of scandal.

He managed his urbane chuckle.

‘There are no regulations forbidding the employment of gays as policemen,’ he said. ‘On the contrary, any attempt to prevent such employment could itself be a contravention of the law under the Sexual Discrimination Act.’

‘Of course,’ said Ogilby. ‘But the implication is that there’d be a story to sell. Gays are open to blackmail, undue influence, that sort of thing. That’s why the KGB are so keen to suss ’em out in the British Embassy over there. You can be caught in bed with a girl and laugh it off, but a boy’s still something different. Despite Mrs Whitehouse, this is still a Puritan country.’

‘You think so, do you?’ said Watmough. ‘What would you like, mum’s trifle or Spotted Dick?’

‘I think I’ll skip the pudding,’ said Ogilby. ‘Off the record, I’ll keep you posted if anything else comes up, Nev. On the record, I take it you’ve no idea if there is any truth in this?’

‘I’m sure there’s none whatsoever,’ said Watmough firmly.

But I’ll bloody well soon find out, he assured himself. And God help the nasty little pervert if there is!

At the far end of the room, Dalziel was still laughing.