The man who sold death

CHAPTER 2

Marshall and Hoskins went back to the station to sort out what they'd got before conferring with the police surgeon and the expert from the forensic laboratory. The sergeant on duty told Marshall that the chief constable would like to see him as soon as the conference was finished. Marshall listened, impassive, and Hoskins ached in sympathy for him. A detective inspector with nothing to report should at least be spared chief constables.

Two men waited for them in Marshall's tiny office. Thomas, the police surgeon, was slow, bespectacled, taciturn, and fair-minded to the point where defense counsel bought him drinks. The man from the forensic lab, Inspector Maynard, was an ex-Royal Engineer whose passion for explosives had survived even bomb disposal. As Marshall entered, he slapped him gratefully on the shoulder.

"Well, Bob," he said. "You've sent us a beauty this time."

"Glad you like it," said Marshall, but he was thinking of the chief constable, and his voice was sour.

"Biggest we've ever had," said Maynard. "Enormous. You know we found pieces of that car in a tree fifty yards away? And we had to cut them out. They were going like bullets. They might as well have dropped an H-bomb on the poor bastard. I've never seen anything like it."

"What did they use?" Marshall asked.

"Hard to say yet," Maynard said. "Gelignite maybe. If it was, they used a hell of a lot. In fact, I thought it was something a bit more lively at first. Plastic stuff maybe. The blast waves were all wrong for dynamite."

"It wasn't TNT?" Marshall asked.

Maynard said, "The detonation would be too difficult. You need something with a big impact for that, like a bomb or a shell."

He settled back with the contentment of a man who knows he's going to say something good, and his big, capable hands, deft for all their size, groped in an ancient Gladstone bag and emerged with the mangled remains of a heavy steel box and a flat cake of lead.

"The lid of the box is magnetized," he said. He nicked a paper clip at it and it snapped at once to its battered top. "Very highly magnetized. The explosive charge was inside, so that all the killer had to do was clamp it to the underside of the car beneath the driver's seat. Then a piece of cord was run from the box and this lead weight was attached to its other end. As you can see, it's very heavy." He tossed it up in the air. "The weight was balanced on the exhaust pipe of the car. When the-"

Thomas said, "But surely that's impossible? I mean, look at the shape of it."

Maynard chuckled. "It was the right shape when it started," he said. "We found it embedded in a brick." He beamed at them; talking about explosives always made him happy.

"When the car's engine was switched on," he continued, "the vibration shook the lead loose, and the resultant pull on the cord detonated the charge inside. The results of that you've seen for yourselves."

His voice was now a lecturer's, primly impersonal, and Marshall looked at him, astonished. He had been the first to see the body. In the past he'd seen men shot, burned, knifed, battered to death, but he had never in his life seen anything so appalling as the twisted remains of that body. Below the waist it had ceased to exist, and the head had been completely smashed by impact with the windshield of the car. After that there had been the fire… The man had died immediately, but the dismemberment of a human being was so cruel in itself that it had haunted his nightmares for the last two nights. He turned to Thomas.

"Anything you want to say, Doctor?" he asked.

Thomas waited for a count of three before answering, as he always did.

"There is very little I can tell," he said at last. "Obviously he was killed outright by any number of things, all of them lethal. I found a fractured skull, a broken neck, several arteries severed, at least a dozen bones broken, and a steering-wheel rib driven through his heart. No one ever died more quickly."

Thomas turned to Marshall. "How will you prove identification?" he asked.

"Clothes and shoes," Marshall said. "The bits we got were Craig's all right. Hand-made stuff. I've had them identified."

Thomas nodded.

"I see," he said. "Do you need me for anything else?" Marshall said no, and he left.

Maynard explained how the container had been made wider at the top than at the bottom, and the magnetized lid much thinner than the rest of it. In that way the main force of the explosion struck straight up at the driver.

"A little beauty," said Maynard, then added, "the bastard."

Hoskins looked up from his notebook in surprise. He had never before heard Maynard criticize an effective explosion.

"He didn't care who got it, did he?" Maynard asked. "Craig could have had half a dozen kids aboard. Anybody. For all this sod cared, they could all go, just so long as Craig went with them. I know it's stupid to hate in our business, but this time I can't help it."

"What do you make of it?" Marshall asked.

Maynard shrugged. "There you've got me, boy. That's your problem, thank heaven. I've given you the modus operandi, the rest is up to you. Fancy a beer?"

"Yes," said Marshall, "but the chief wants to see me."

"Ah," said Maynard. "I'll be over in the Grapes if you've got time."

Marshall followed him out, knocked on the oak door of the chief constable's room, and went in as soon as he heard the unintelhgible growl from inside.

"Sit down, Inspector," Chief Constable Seddons said, and Marshall sat, with that strange combination of strength and primness that never left him. He and the chief constable fitted perfectly into that bare, aseptic office, and Marshall began to relax without knowing why.

"This Craig business," the chief said. "How's it shaping up?"

Marshall told himl There was no point in evasions and both men knew it. Marshall talked clearly and economically, telling how he had found the body, the shambles of the garage, the continued unconsciousness of Mrs. Craig who, according to Dr. Brady, was abominable. He described the bomb, and how it worked, and his interview with Sir Geoffrey. Then he reported on his progress. Stolidly, in the same economical way, he told the chief that there was no progress to report. Craig had been a man with dozens of acquaintances and no friends, a man who lived for his work, a man whose only private possessions were a handful of snapshots and a judo belt. "You checked on that?"

Marshall nodded. "None of the local judo clubs owns him, sir. Hoskins is looking into it now. He says the black belt's the best there is. And he should know, sir. He's pretty good at it himself." He paused. "I've been flunking, sir. I'd like to get in touch with the Admiralty about his background."

The chief said, "I've already done that."

Marshall scowled then, unable to hide his anger.

"I know I shouldn't have," the chief said. "And I'm sorry I had to do it, Inspector, but I had no choice. You'll see why in a minute, but you'd better read this first."

He handed a typed foolscap sheet to Marshall.

It read: "To Chief Constable. From: Admiralty Record Office. Transcribed Telephone Report.

"John Craig joined the Royal Navy in 1941, as a volunteer, at the age of seventeen. Trained at Devonport. Showed outstanding ability in the handling of small boats. Outstanding also in the use of small arms and unarmed combat. After one voyage in a destroyer, went to the Special Boat Service in the Mediterranean, where he stayed for the remainder of war. Promoted Leading Seaman, Petty Officer, Sub-Lieutenant, Lieutenant. Promotion from petty officer to commissioned officer unusual, but justified (a) by a shortage of officers, (b) by Lieutenant Craig's remarkable abilities.

"Lieutenant Craig was twice decorated (D.S.O., D.S.C.) and three times mentioned in dispatches. He took part in seventeen major raids against the enemy in Greece, Italy, and North Africa, was twice captured and twice escaped. All the boats he commanded inflicted severe damage on the enemy. (Details withheld. Their information is still partially secret.)

"Lieutenant Craig is a man of outstanding courage and very high intelligence. (By the end of the war he was fluent in French, Italian, and Greek, proficient in Arabic and German.) All the officers and men with whom he served were impressed by his qualities as a man of action."

Marshall put the paper back on the chief's desk and waited.

"Is there anything you want to ask me?" Seddons asked.

Marshall hesitated. The memo had given him enough to gamble on, no more. At last he said, "The bomb, sir. Inspector Maynard gave me a list of things it might have been."

Seddons said, "Well?"

Marshall said, "I think it was plastic, sir." This time the chief didn't smile; he grinned. "Why?" he asked.

"Craig ran a shipping line," said Marshall. "His ships were tramps. They sailed up the Baltic, picked up cargo all over the place, then moved down through the North Sea, into the Atlantic-France, Spain-then on into the Mediterranean. Here's a typical run, sir." He took a notebook from his pocket. "This is the Rose of Tralee last year. Danzig, Hamburg, Antwerp, Rabat. Rabat is in Morocco, sir. In Danzig the Rose of Tralee loaded agricultural machinery and shoes from Czechoslovakia. In Hamburg they took on cars, sewing machines, and sports equipment. The shoes were unloaded at Antwerp. The machinery and sports equipment went on to Rabat." Marshall paused and took a deep breath. What he was going to say now, what he had to say, would earn him savage mockery if he was wrong. At last he said, "I don't think his manifests told the truth. I think the agricultural machinery and the sports equipment were arms for the Algerian insurgents." Seddons said nothing, and he went on: "I don't think Sir Geoffrey Gunter knows. Craig probably gave him the flat rate for the job and kept the gun-running perks himself.

"There's another thing. Craig speaks German, French, and Arabic. And every year he went abroad for six weeks to look for customers. I think that could have been a good cover for his gun-running contacts."

"Go on," said Seddons.

"Craig was a planner. He worked things out and he had a cold nerve. Men followed his leadership too. There would have to be a man on his ships he could trust, and the man he would want would be the master. But whoever it was would trust Craig's judgment"-he tapped the memo-"if this means anything at all." "Why plastic?" Seddons asked.

"The French settlers don't like people helping the Arabs," Marshall said. "They've got their own organizations-the A.F.L. and so on. And they've also got their own terrorist groups. And they're dirty fighters. Fanatics. They've used a lot of explosives too. Mostly it's been plastic. That's why I thought-" His voice trailed off. "I'm very sorry, sir. I know this must all seem ridiculous. But it's the only thing that fits the facts."

Seddons said, "I had a man in to see me this morning. He was from the Special Branch, seconded to some cloak-and-dagger outfit I'd never heard of." He smiled with a realist's amused tolerance, and this time Marshall smiled too.

"He was looking for a man," Seddons said. "It might or might not have been Craig. He didn't know. He wasn't prepared to tell me how he was going to find out. But the man he was looking for was wanted urgently-very urgently. When I told him that Craig had been murdered he asked if he'd been plastique. You know what that means? It's French for blown up-with a plastic bomb. Pity he couldn't have got here a bit sooner." He gave Marshall a third smile.

"You've done very well," he said. "Anything else?"

"Yes, sir," said Marshall. "One more thing. I'd like to trace Mrs. Craig's brother, Charlie Green. He's the only one who visited Craig regularly, and that was to borrow money."

"You think he's mixed up in this?" Seddons asked.

"He might be," said Marshall. "Anyway, he's the only lead we've got. The Craigs' charwoman gave me a description, and he bought a motor bike a while ago. We might trace him through that. He's the sort of bloke that changes his lodgings pretty regularly. I think he might have a bit of a record, sir."

"All right, you carry on. It's your case," Seddons said. Marshall rose, then hesitated.

"There's just one more thing, sir. The Rose of

Tralee is due in Genoa tomorrow. I think someone should let her skipper know what's happened. He could be next on the list."

"Good idea," said Seddons, and Marshall went out at peace with the world. Seddons hadn't the heart to tell him that the man from Intelligence had suggested the same thing.