Here Comes Charlie M

TWENTY

Superintendent Law accepted completely the futility of the review when a detective sergeant from the Regional Crime Squad seriously suggested that the bank robbery had been Mafia inspired.

He sighed, allowing the meeting that had already lasted two hours to extend for a further fifteen minutes and then rose, ending it. He thanked them for their attendance, promised another discussion if there had been no break in the case within a fortnight and walked out of the room with Sergeant Hardiman.

‘Waste of bloody time, that was,’ he said, back in his office.

Hardiman waited at the door, accepting tea from the woman with the trolley.

‘Bread pudding or Dundee cake?’ asked the sergeant.

‘Neither,’ said Law.

Hardiman came carefully into the room, his pudding balanced on top of one of the cups.

‘Mafia,’ he echoed. ‘Jesus Christ!’

‘Funny though,’ said Hardiman. He pushed an escaping crumb into his mouth.

‘What is?’

‘The dead end,’ said the sergeant. ‘We get the biggest job we’ve had in this manor for years. Indications of a professional safebreaker are everywhere and after almost a month, we’ve got nothing. No whispers, no gossip, no nothing.’

‘So it was someone from outside. We decided that days ago,’ Law reminded him. He had spoken too sharply, he realised.

‘So who?’ asked Hardiman, unoffended. ‘Who, a stranger to the area, could set up a job like this?’

Law threw his hands up, wishing he’d accepted the bread pudding. It looked very good and he’d only had a pickled egg and a pork pie for lunch, he remembered.

‘It’s in there, somewhere,’ he said, gesturing towards the files stacked up against the wall. ‘All we’ve got to, do is find it.’

Hardiman carefully wiped the sugar from his lips and hands.

‘That was nice; you should have had some,’ said the sergeant. He looked towards the manila folders. ‘It might be in there, but we’re going to need help to see it.’

‘One hundred and twenty boxes,’ reflected Law. ‘And carefully hidden in one of them was something that would make it all so clear to us.’

‘But which one?’ said Hardiman. ‘We’ve interviewed the owners and they’re all lying buggers.’

‘Crime is not solved by brilliant intuition or startling intellect,’ started Law, and Hardiman looked at him warily. The superintendent had a tendency to lecture, he thought.

‘… it’s solved by straightforward, routine police work,’ completed Law. He looked expectantly at the other man.

When Hardiman said nothing, Law prompted. ‘And what, sergeant, is the basis of routine police work?’

Hardiman still said nothing, aware of the other man’s unhappiness at the lack of progress and unwilling to increase his anger with the wrong answer.

‘Statements?’ he tried at last.

Law smiled.

‘Statements,’ he agreed. ‘Good, old-fashioned, copper-on-a-bike statements.’

Hardiman waited.

‘So,’ decided Law, ‘we will start all over again. We’ll turn out those bright sods who spend all their time watching television and admiring the Mafia and we’ll go to every box-holder and we’ll take a completely fresh statement, saying there are some additional points we want covered. And then we’ll practise straightforward, routine police work and compare everything they said first time with everything they say the second time. And where the difference is too great we’ll go back again and take a third statement and if necessary a fourth and we’ll keep on until we shake the bloody clue out of the woodwork.’

‘It’ll take a while,’ warned Hardiman, doubtfully. ‘That scruffy bloke with the home in Switzerland, for instance. The one we saw last? Telephoned yesterday to say he’d be in London for at least a week, on business.’

‘Don’t care how long it takes,’ said Law positively. ‘I want it done. If he’s not back in a week contact that firm he gave us and get him back. I want everyone seen again. Everyone.’

‘Right,’ said Hardiman, moving out of the room. Law called, stopping him at the door.

‘If you pass that tea-lady and she’s still got some of that bread pudding, send her back with some, will you?’

‘Certainly,’ said the sergeant. There wouldn’t be, he knew. He’d had the last piece. But the superintendent was annoyed enough as it was, so it was better not to tell him.

Edith left the Zurich apartment early, changing trains at Berne to catch the express. She crossed from Calais to Dover and hired a Jaguar, deciding the need for comfort during the amount of driving she might have to do justified the expense.

It was a bright, sharp day, the February sunshine too weak to take the overnight whiteness from the fields and hedges of Kent. She drove unhurriedly, cocooned in the warmth of the car, missing the worst of the traffic by skirting London to the west.

She got a room without difficulty at the Randolph and by eight o’clock was in the bar, with a sherry she didn’t want, selecting a meal she knew she wouldn’t enjoy.

‘Scotch,’ ordered Ruttgers, at the other end of the bar. ‘Plenty of ice.’