The man who sold death

CHAPTER 1

In April 1961, on a cold, clear Sunday morning, Charlie Green went to start his brother-in-law's car. The idea pleased Charlie, who owned but had not finished paying for a motor scooter. His brother-in-law's car was a Bristol; it had eight cylinders and disk brakes. To hold its wheel, to put your foot on its accelerator, was to know power; to deal, if the fates willed it, in death. Charlie, opulent in a fifty-guinea suit and hand-made shoes that his brother-in-law had grown tired of, opened the back door of the house and stepped into the garden. This was the northeast of England, and it was cold. The wind blew bitterly and persistently, retaining still the spiteful zest it had picked up in Siberia, and overhead a seagull planed and screeched complaint to the skies. Charlie shivered, and hurried to the garage.

Its door swung open easily, and for the thousandth time Charlie admired what he saw inside; the car, gleaming with wax, the neat tool racks, the workbench, even the inspection pit. It all meant money. His sister had done all right for herself, he thought, and so, in his modest way, had Charlie. With a brother-in-law like his, you need lack for nothing. Rich-and generous with it. A rare combination, very rare. The garage was warm-a small spirit stove glowed in the corner-and Charlie decided to leave it on. It was nice to be warm, and comfortable, and secure. He opened the car door and got inside, then fussed in his pockets until he found the key on its thin silver chain. He put the key in the ignition and sat happily, imagining with what grace and skill he would drive the big, warm, beautiful car. Life, he thought, is good. Then he switched on.

The explosion wrecked the car completely, and blew

the side out of the garage. It transformed Charlie Green from a man dreaming of happiness into raw and hideous meat. Then it started a fire, and Charlie Green could not be recognized ever again. It hurled bricks and lumps of wood, too, a great distance, scarring the paintwork of his brother-in-law's house, cracking the panels in its doors, smashing such windows as were not shattered by blast. One brick burst through to hit Charlie Green's sister on the head, knocking her unconscious to the floor, where a long sliver of glass lay embedded like a sword.

Charlie Green's brother-in-law had been working in bis orchard, a grove of apple trees fifty yards from the house. To him the explosion was an outrage, a sound of such enormity that he felt at first stunned, then sick. He dropped the saw he had been using and ran, past the burning garage, into the house, crouching as he went as if to escape another terrible blast of noise. Inside he stopped to look at his wife, from whose mouth a thin trickle of blood was running, and touched her pulse, which was slow and uneven. She lay with one leg bent, exposing the top of her stocking and the paleness of her naked thigh. Gently the man pulled down the hem of her skirt; conscious, she would never have lain in an attitude so abandoned. He walked past her to a small room on the ground floor, his study, opened a cupboard, and took from it a briefcase, a small suitcase, and a Luger automatic pistol, then put on his brother-in-law's duffle coat on top of the overalls and sweater he had worn to prune his trees.

He hesitated, and turned again to his wife, but when the telephone rang he fled, crouching, to Charlie Green's scooter, shoved the cases into its panniers, and kicked it into life. His house was a quarter of a mile away from his nearest neighbor's, and no one saw him. He called the police and ambulance from a phone booth, and by the time they arrived, he had traveled five miles. When his wife was admitted to the hospital he had reached Newcastle and the Al. He turned off it south of York, sought and found a deserted road. Houses far away, warm with the wealth of Sunday, and he drove along a narrow road, deep ditches on each side, with a cart track leading to it through empty fields.

He propped the scooter against a wooden platform for milk churns, and pondered on how to destroy it. At last he made a fuse from the lining of Charlie's duffle coat, soaked it in gasoline, left it in the tank, lit it, and ran, taking his cases with him, and his gun. Again an explosion shocked him, but he ran even faster. A bus took him back to York, and he found that he was hungry. He ate at the station buffet-pie and sandwiches, strong brown tea-with the soldiers, the maintenance men, the four youths with guitars, who traveled on Sundays because they had no choice. Like him. His train was late, and he was once more afraid. When it came he found an empty carriage and sat very still, watching the window. He stayed like that all the way to King's Cross.

Detective Inspector Marshall called at the hospital and went to look at the woman. Brady was the surgeon attending her, short and squat, utterly Geordie, with a face like a chimpanzee's, ugly, mischievous, and charming. Marshall had never been at ease with Brady.

"Severe concussion," Brady said. "Hit by a brick and the brick was moving. She's not dead yet, not by any means, but whether she'll ever remember anything-" He shrugged.

Marshall looked at the still figure on the bed, the face as white as bone.

"When will she be conscious?" he asked. Brady shrugged again.

"Maybe this afternoon, maybe never. She's been out twenty-four hours as it is. They had one in the Midlands somewhere-she was out for fifteen months, then she died. Never regained consciousness." He looked at the woman again. "Silly old bag."

Marshall stared at him, surprised.

"In my business it doesn't do to be hypocritical," said Brady. "Did you know her?" "No," said Marshall. _

"She was on all the committees," Brady said. "Leprosy, Save the Children, Mayoress's Charities. None of my wives could stand her."

Brady, who regarded marriage as an ideal capable of ultimate achievement, had been married three times.

"Full of her social importance," said Brady. "Always introduced herself as 'Mrs. John Craig-my husband's in shipping, you know.' "

Marshall said, "So he was. He managed the Rose Line. Six tramps. Go anywhere, load anything."

"He played bridge, too," said Brady. "And poker."

"Good?" asked Marshall.

Brady nodded. "Mind like a computer and no nerves at all," he said. "Working for Gunter, he'd need them both. You seen him yet?"

"No," said Marshall. "That's another treat I've got coming."

Brady stuffed his stethoscope in his pocket and offered Marshall a cigarette.

"Why would anybody do a thing like that?" he asked.

Marshall said, "No reason at all, so far. But they did. If we knew why-"

"Dynamite," said Brady. "Who would dynamite poor Craig?"

Marshall started to say something, then hesitated.

"Let me know if you find out," he said at last. "I'll be with Sir Geoffrey."

Brady looked in disgust at the figure on the bed. Typical of him, thought Marshall. He'll work like a mule to keep her alive, yet he can't stand the sight of her.

"Her now," said Brady. "I could understand anybody killing her. Pompous bitch." His voice changed to a parody of a half-educated, middle-class woman's, mellow with self-esteem, firm with ignorance. "My husband is an associate of Sir Geoffrey's, you know. Such a dear, sweet man. In these days one is fortunate to find a colleague who has any breeding at all. My husband has been lucky." Brady scowled. "And poor old John sitting there and taking it and never daring to argue."

"Why not?" asked Marshall.

"Because she'd just have kept on going," Brady said. "She was improving him. Making him mix with the right sort of people, wear the right clothes, use the right voice. It didn't matter that he was the one who did all the work in the firm. You can't argue with women like that.

They just don't listen. Believe me, I know." He scowled at the memory. "All he could have done was give her a bit of a clout now and then, and he couldn't manage that, being English-and middle-class. But it takes something drastic to shut up the Mrs. Craigs."

"Such as?" asked Marshall.

"Dynamite," said Brady.

Marshall went back down the corridor to the hospital entrance. His sergeant, Hoskins, was waiting there, talking to a nurse, a pretty one. Hoskins was big and blond and easygoing and women seemed to rise out of the ground to meet him. He saw Marshall coming, and whispered to the nurse, who giggled and walked off in her brisk, rustling, rat-tat nurse's walk.

Hoskins said, "Nurse Carr, sir. She put Mrs. Craig to bed."

Marshall said, "She's got nice legs too." Hoskins grinned.

"Brady said Mrs. Craig may be out for days," Marshall went on. "Says he liked her husband. So did everybody else. He was a likable sort of a chap. Quiet, good at his job, good card player. Not the type that gets murdered. In fact Brady seemed surprised she wasn't the one who got it. Disappointed, too."

"Who would kill her?" Hoskins asked.

"Craig would-according to Brady," Marshall said. "And Brady wouldn't have blamed him. Does Mrs. Craig drive?"

Hoskins nodded. "She's got a current licence, anyway," he said. "But surely Craig wouldn't set up a booby trap like that and just forget about it?"

"No," Marshall said. "Not Craig. But she didn't have any motive to kill him, and no one else was there." He sighed. "So far there isn't any reason why anybody should have done anything. We've got to keep on going until we find one. Let's go and see Sir Geoffrey."

The police Humber took them back into the town, past the housing estates and the fifteen-story flats, past the football ground, the dog track, the supermarket and bingo belt, into the old town of movie houses and dance halls and Edwardian pubs, and long, tight streets of houses all pushing their way to the docks. Then the docks themselves, disused coal staithes, and their first glimpse of the river, gray and broad and slow, and downriver the big ships waiting, the fishing boats and tugs tied up in rows, bobbing in unison like ducklings. This was where John Craig had worked, utilizing his mind and nerve and making money; quite a bit for himself, and vast sums for Sir Geoffrey Gunter, chairman of the Rose Line, now in need of a new manager.

The Rose Line's offices had been Sir Geoffrey's grandfather's house and offices combined, and now Sir Geoffrey had them preserved for him by a trust because the place had been designed by Dobson and Craig had had an idea for saving money. The house was big and deftly proportioned, more like London than Tyneside, as was its owner, Sir Geoffrey, a healthy, pink man in tweeds, deftly proportioned as his offices, and with the same air of being left over from a more spacious, more class-distinctive age. His very cigars seemed Edwardian, and he offered them with exactly the right air; a gentleman conferring a favor on a social inferior whom he wishes to put at his ease. It was unfair of Marshall to refuse, thought Hoskins. The old boy looked as though he'd been done out of a treat. He puffed out a cloud of Havana smoke, and deposited half a crown's worth of ash in a copper ashtray. He and Marshall sat in chairs of mahogany and black leather, and Sir Geoffrey faced them across a mahogany desk. To their right a bow window looked out to the river, the rattle of rivet hammers muted now to a gentle background noise. To be rich, thought Hoskins, was not necessarily to be a bastard, but it brought its own problems. Where was Sir Geoffrey going to find another Craig?

"In the Navy," Sir Geoffrey was saying. "He did very well during the war. He joined the firm in forty-seven. Of course he was very green, but he learned very quickly and I'm bound to say he's built up the business."

In forty-seven, Hoskins remembered, there'd been a terrible shortage of shipping as of everything else, and the men who'd done well were the ones who'd got ships built first to replace the stuff lost in the war, men who'd been prepared to jump into it, shove and shout and threaten and bribe to get their ships on the slipway. Sir Geoffrey didn't look like that. There'd been fat pickings in the fifties, but afterwards the shipyards had caught up and there were far too many ships looking for cargoes and the threat of a slump was always in the air, like a fog. Hoskins remembered his father's stories of the last depression, of ships sailing from the Tyne with half a dozen master mariners in the focs'le. Things weren't as bad as that yet, but a man who could keep a cargo ship sailing now was a miracle worker, in a small way. Sir Geoffrey had never worked miracles, not even small ones.

"We concentrate on the Mediterranean mostly," Sir Geoffrey was saying. "That and the Baltic. Lot of small stuff, but if you can get it all in one cargo it does very nicely. Craig was very good at that. He had a lot of contacts, you know."

"Where, sir?"

"All over the place. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, North Africa. Germany too. Very likable sort of chap. Then the Rose Line is reliable. Always has been. Once people come to us, they stick. He saw to that."

"What did he do before forty-seven?" asked Marshall.

"Some sort of import and export. Did damn well at it too. He brought quite a bit of capital with him."

"Where did he work?" asked Marshall.

"The Mediterranean mostly. That's where all his original contacts were," Sir Geoffrey said.

"Tangier?"

"It's possible," said Sir Geoffrey. Then he turned slowly, imperially purple.

"Now look here," he said. "Are you suggesting that an associate of mine was a smuggler?"

"He may have been," Marshall said. "If he was, it was a long time ago-but it may have given him enemies."

Sir Geoffrey said stubbornly, "He was a very decent fellow."

"I'm sure he was," said Marshall. "Did he have any relatives?"

"No," said Sir Geoffrey. "Poor chap was an orphan. His wife had a brother, I believe."

"Yes," said Marshall. "We're trying to trace him."

"Bit of a bad lot, from what poor John told us," said Sir Geoffrey. "Work-shy sort of chap. Always borrowing."

"Was Craig afraid of him?" Marshall asked.

"John wasn't afraid of anyone," Sir Geoffrey said, and Marshall's eyes flicked up at him. The old man seemed so sure.

"Did he have any enemies that you, knew of?"

"No," Sir Geoffrey said. "Why should he? He was likable, I told you. One or two business rivals, of course. But dynamite! That doesn't happen in shipping, Inspector."

"I realize that," said Marshall gravely, "but we've got to start somewhere. You tell me he was likable-yet I can't find one close friend. I can't find his wife's brother, either. If I'm going to find out who did it I need information. How much did you pay him?"

Sir Geoffrey huffed a bit and puffed a bit, but in the end he told, because what had happened was so terrible, and he wanted to help if he could.

"Five thousand a year," he said. "He had some shares too. But he earned it. He worked damn hard."

They went into Craig's office and questioned his secretary, Miss Cross, and learned nothing except that she was in love with him, and he'd been too busy to notice. Methodically the two big men went through the desk, the filing cabinet, the safe. Contracts, manifests, and letters going back for a decade. Some of them were in German, some in French, and Marshall put them aside for the interpreter. They wouldn't tell him anything, he was sure, but he couldn't leave anything to chance. Miss Cross fussed a bit about opening the safe, but Hoskins used his wistful charm and she did it at last, to show them a series of ledgers, a hundred pounds in cash, and a handful of old snapshots. Craig in the Navy, as an ordinary seaman, as a leading hand, then as a petty officer in small boats, ramshackle affairs with an Arab look about them. By the end of the war, he was a full lieutenant, piratical in a stocking cap and dirty overalls, always in small boats, always with the hard sunlight of the Mediterranean as background.

"Special Boat Service," said Marshall. "A tough job. We'll have to get on to the Admiralty about this lot."

Hoskins grunted, and dived into the safe once more. From the back of it he extracted a roll of black woven cloth, and let it unwind in his hands. It formed a long, thin line to the floor, and Hoskins wound it up again carefully, almost with reverence.

"Judo black belt," he said.

"Is that good?" Marshall asked.

Hoskins nodded. "Too good for me. The best there is." He turned to Miss Cross. "Have you seen this before?" She shook her head.

"I don't think it was Mr. Craig's," she said. "Why not?"

"Judo's wrestling, isn't it?" Hoskins nodded. "Mr. Craig wasn't interested in that sort of thing. He wasn't a rough sort of man."

Marshall looked at the photographs in his hands. The man they showed was young, scarcely a man at all by legal definition, but hard as nails. He looked back at Miss Cross, who had made Craig over in a different image; bowler hat, Bristol saloon, the casual gallantry of the wardroom; Miss Cross loved what she had made. Perhaps that was how Mrs. Craig had felt too. Marshall said nothing, but he kept the photographs, and the belt.