Home Run

When the body had been moved, when the widow had left with her daughter to go to the home of the dead man's brother, a team of detectives went inside the mews house. There was no point at that time in trying to interview the widow and her daughter, both hysterical and about to be tranquillized.

"I regret, Mr Parrish, that Mr Furniss will simply not be able to contribute to your investigation."

"We would like to establish that for ourselves."

"You misunderstand me… there is no question of Mr Furniss being able to talk to you."

Park thought that if he had been a yobbo and lost his passport in Benidorm, then they'd have treated him better.

He and Parrish were in iron framed chairs in a Foreign and Commonwealth Office interview room. There were two men on the other side of the polished table, one of whom didn't speak. The one who spoke wore a three-piece suit, a stiff collar in this day and age, would you believe it, and a Brigade of Guards tie puffed out, and his voice was a drawl as if it were almost as much as he could manage, having to speak to the likes of Park and Parrish. Park felt a pillock anyway, because at the Lane the duty nurse had put an Elastoplast over a dressing soaked in witch hazel across a ridge of bruise on his forehead.

"We usually find that we are the best judges of who can, and who cannot, help us with our inquiries."

"Let me try it out on you, Mr Parrish, with words of one syllable

… You will not see him."

"I am a Senior Investigation Officer in the Investigation Division of Customs and Excise. I am working on a case involving the importation from Iran of several hundred thousand pounds' worth, street value, of heroin. My principal suspect, the importer, was issued with a Stateless Person's travel papers naming Matthew Furniss as a guarantor… I hope I haven't gone too fast for you… that makes Mr Furniss necessary to my investigation as I build up a profile of a resourceful and dangerous criminal."

"You should exclude Mr Furniss from your investigations, Mr Parrish."

"We are getting dangerously close, I must warn you, to obstruction. Obstruction is a criminal offence."

"I doubt it, in this case."

"In some quarters the importation of heroin is regarded as a very serious matter."

"Quite rightly, but Mr Furniss will not be able to help you."

"I'll go over your head."

"That's your privilege, but you will be wasting your time My advice would be to stay with the essentials."

"You'll eat those words."

"We'll see. Good luck with your investigation, gentlemen."

They drove back to the Lane. Marooned in traffic, Parrish turned on Park.

"You were a lot of help."

"Stood out a mile."

"Tell me, clever clogs, what stood out a mile?"

"He's a spook."

"Enlighten me."

"Secret Intelligence Service, the jokers over the Thames in the tower block. He was telling you to piss off, Bill. If a spook is sent over to tell us to go away, then it stands to reason that Matthew Furniss is an intelligence wallah, presumably pretty big. Otherwise they wouldn't try that sort of high and mighty shit."

"Sickening, but you're probably right."

"I want a promise, Bill."

"Shoot."

"They're going to try and block us, I bet you. Right now the phones are purring. We've got Iranian heroin, Iranian exiles, we've got car bombs, and we've got a big boy spook.

They don't want grubby little Customs sniffing into that."

"What's the promise?"

"That we don't back off, Bill, just because a stiff white collar tells us to."

"Promise."

"Screw them, Bill."

"Too right, young Keeper, screw them."

He started to sing "Jerusalem". Parrish was in full flood by the time they made it back to the Lane.

In the evening, when his food was brought to the door, Mattie gave his guard three sheets of paper filled with his handwriting.

The text detailed his study over many years of the Urartian civilization that had been based around the present day Turkish city of Van.