Daggers Drawn

Swiftwing 98 Peter O’Donnell

“And we’re not television policemen,” said Inspector Lestrade to his new Detective Sergeant, “so make sure you never call me ‘Guv’. Right?”

The D.S. nodded. He was a middlesized, strongly built man of’ twenty-eight, with a thick neck, placid temperament, and gingery moustache. “Right, sir,” he said, watching his superior with mild curiosity as the Inspector glanced back and forth from papers in an open file to the screen of the microcomputer on his desk, wiry fingers dancing expertly over the keys.

Lestrade paused, then touched a single key.

SWIFTWING 98 appeared in green characters. Taking the papers from the file, he stood up and fed them into a shredding machine. The sergeant noticed that a dozen or more similar files, all empty, lay on the nearby table. The desk was clear now except for the telephone, the microcomputer, and a photograph of a smiling woman with blonde hair; a beautiful woman, thought the sergeant, craning his neck to see her better.

Lestrade rested a hand on the shredder. “My personal property,” he said, and moved to touch the computer. “Likewise. Not for common use, Sergeant. Right?”

“Right, sir.”

The Inspector resumed his seat with a brooding air. He was in his middle forties, with dark hair, dark bitter eyes, and a thin sallow face. “I come from a long line of policemen,” he said, “and they’d spin in their graves if we behaved like these actors do on television, so watch yourself. I’m not a friendly policeman. I bear grudges. I enjoy letting the sun go down on my wrath. I never let bygones be bygones, even unto the third and fourth generation. Any questions?”

The sergeant smiled engagingly. “Only to ask what you’d like me to start on today, sir.”

Lestrade stared hard at him for a moment, then slid the photograph along the desk. “You can start by making sure nobody murders this woman.”

The sergeant picked up the print and studied it briefly. “It’s Eva Kossuth, the Hungarian concert pianist,” he said. “She defected in Paris last week and she’s coming to live in England.”

“You’re an improvement on my last D.S.,” Lestrade said grudgingly. “He stopped at the sports pages.”

“Why do you think somebody might try to murder her, sir?”

Lestrade nodded at the computer, where SWIFTWING 98 still showed on the screen. “I feed information in, and I get back probabilities. The information comes from snouts, our central computer, SIS and MI5 liaison, overseas contacts, and any other available source. It’s part of my remit to keep an eye on dissident refugees, so-called governments in exile, defectors, and any groups at odds with the governments of their countries.” Again he indicated the machine. My little friend says there’s a ninety-eight percent probability that Eva Kossuth will be liquidated because her country’s intelligence services now believe she’s been spying for the West for several years.”

The sergeant said, “But who’s Swiftwing, sir?”

“That’s the code-name I gave Eva Kossuth when I started the programme.” Lestrade switched off the computer and looked at his watch. “She’s arriving by train at Victoria Station today. A bunch of Free Hungarians will be there to welcome her. You get along to Victoria now. She’s not due till one thirty-five, but you can sniff around and see if anything smells funny. I’ll be there myself, under cover, when Eva Kossuth arrives. Off you go.”

“Right, sir.”

For two hours the D.S. prowled the concourse, antennae tuned for any hint of impending danger. Shortly before the train was due, some nine or ten men with instruments and a banner entered the concourse. The banner declared: Musicians of Free Hungary Welcome Eva Kossuth. For a moment the D.S. felt a tremor of’ suspicion, then it was gone, and he struggled to hide astonishment as he saw that the man carrying a clarionet was dark haired with a thin sallow face and dark bitter eyes. Evidently Inspector Lestrade had secured permission for the band to be there.

At Victoria Station few events are sufficiently bizarre to attract attention, and the musicians were virtually ignored. Once, glancing up from the newspaper he was pretending to read, the sergeant caught Lestrade’s eye and received a minute nod.

The train came in five minutes late, and when most of the passengers had passed through the gate the sergeant saw Eva Kossuth, tall and slim, blonde head bare, wearing a camel coat. A porter at her side wheeled a trolley with a trunk on it. The band struck up the old Hungarian national anthem, Himnusz, and Eva Kossuth stopped short as she came through the gate, smiling and surprised.

The sergeant looked quickly about him, but still nobody was taking much interest. The anthem ended. The grey-haired leader of the group passed his trumpet to a colleague and made a short speech of welcome in his own tongue. Eva Kossuth replied briefly but warmly. The musicians applauded. Passers-by watched idly. The spokesman produced a bottle of champagne and a glass from a basket at his side. The bottle was opened, champagne foamed into the glass. Eva Kossuth raised it high, spoke a few stirring words, then drank.

Again the sergeant glanced around him. Still no hint of trouble. He heard the glass smash, and as his head snapped round he saw Eva Kossuth slump to the ground among the fragments. For a moment there was unbelieving silence, then Lestrade called sharply to the grey-haired leader, “Mr. Schulek! Tell your people to remain quite still!” There was little need for the command. The grey-haired man dragged his eyes from the limp figure sprawled on the ground to look in horror at the bottle he held, while the rest of the musicians gazed in stupefied fashion.

The sergeant moved very quickly for a man of such stocky build. Within seconds he was kneeling beside Eva Kossuth, fingers resting on her neck, feeling the erratic flicker of her pulse as it dwindled to stillness. He looked up, shocked, into Lestrade’s angry face and said, “I think she’s gone, sir.”

The Inspector’s hands clenched on the clarionet he still held, then he said in a tightly controlled voice, “I want a call put out over the Tannoy asking if there’s a doctor on the concourse. I want an ambulance and the nearest patrol car. I want railway staff to cordon of this area right away. See to it, Sergeant.” He turned to the grey-haired man. “Now, Mr. Schulek, I’ll take charge of’ that bottle, and as soon as some help arrives I shall want to question you and all your colleagues.”

It was late that evening when the D.S. tapped on the door of the Inspector’s office and entered. Lestrade sat hunched in his chair, feet on the desk. The room was heavy with shadows, a single lamp shining on the small computer.

“Good evening, sir,” said the sergeant. “I wondered if you had any news about the Kossuth murder.”

“Murder?” Lestrade said acidly. “Don’t make unwarranted assumptions, Sergeant. None of the exiled Hungarians had a motive, and Forensic reports the champagne and glass fragments yield no sign of poison. That Hungarian pianist wouldn’t be the first victim of heart failure at a moment of high emotion, so it’s possible that Nature forestalled the lady’s enemies — unless the autopsy reveals anything significant.”

“I don’t suppose it will, sir,” said the sergeant. “I expect you used a shellfish toxin. Very fast, and indetectable.”

After a few seconds Lestrade took his feet from the desk and said, “What?”

The sergeant placed a half open matchbox on the desk. In it was a tiny piece of glass, hollow and pointed. “I got to the lady first, sir,” he said apologetically, “and this was sticking out of her neck. Part of a glass dart containing the toxin. You must have intended to remove it yourself, but then thought it had come out when she fell. It really was a very good way of injecting a much greater quantity than by just a smear on a normal blowpipe dart. I also think it was a very good idea, sir, to arrange that you’d be among the welcoming party as a fake musician. Your dummy clarionet made a first-rate blowpipe, and you were able to use it at point blank range.” He nodded towards the cupboard in the corner. “I was in here earlier, sir, and I’ve had a look at it.”

Lestrade sighed. “You’ve covered means and opportunity,” he said. “What about motive?”

“Well, that puzzled me at first, sir, as did the fact that you gave Eva Kossuth the code-name of a loathsome mythical creature. I failed my degree in Hellenic Studies, sir, but I know that Swiftwing was the name of a harpy.”

“So you’re no longer puzzled?”

“No, sir. Because I happen to be a hacker.”

“A what?”

“An expert at getting into computers, sir. I got into yours while you were out this afternoon, so now we both know what happened between 1891 and 1894 to the best known of all detectives. The Great Hiatus scholars call it, as you know, sir, when Sherlock Holmes was believed to have died at the Reichenbach Falls, but then returned after three years and never revealed how he had spent that period of his life.”

“You sound like a Baker Street Irregular,” said the Inspector grimly.

The sergeant shook his head. “Oh no, sir. I’m congratulating you. After years of patiently amassing information, you uncovered the truth when your computer gave you a probability of ninety-eight percent — a virtual certainty, really — that Sherlock Holmes, inveterate bachelor, fathered a son in Hungary during the Great Hiatus; that Eva Kossuth was the granddaughter of that son, and also the last and only descendant of Sherlock Holmes.”

The sergeant smiled. “So your motive was clear, sir, for it’s well-known that you are the great-grandson of that Inspector Lestrade who featured in so many of the Baker Street detective’s cases — and was treated by him like a halfwit.”

“True,” said the Inspector in a quiet, almost dreamy voice. “You know, I was weaned on undying hatred for that sneering, supercilious, fiddle-playing bastard Holmes, like my father and grandfather before me.”

“Even unto the third and fourth generation, sir?”

“Yes. He was a cocksure, copper-knocking, condescending, cocaine-injecting big-head, and I’m delighted to have wiped out the last of his seed. She can accompany him on his fiddle in hell, if they have a piano there.” Lestrade shrugged. “It’s your move, Sergeant.”

The D.S. smiled again. “I’ve read the casebooks many times, sir,” he said, “and I agree with you about Holmes. His arrogance was utterly unbearable, and he treated my own great grandfather as a buffoon. I can’t imagine why the poor chap put up with being put down through all those years of living with Holmes, and even wrote up his cases. But in memory of the good Dr. Watson I’ve decided to forget what I know about Eva Kossuth’s death.”

Lestrade stared. “Sergeant Harry... Watson,” he said slowly. “Well, it’s a common enough name, so I’m not surprised it didn’t register with me.” He stood up. “Fancy a drink, Harry?”

“I’d enjoy that, sir. Thank you.”

“Good. And Harry... I’ve settled the score now, so I don’t care if my constabulary ancestors do spin in their graves. Just call me Guv.”