The Bad Detective Read online

  Jack half rose.

  He wasn’t going to sit there and take this. Whatever it was somebody had put in his confidential records, he was still a damned good detective. A tally of arrests long as your arm to prove it.

  ‘No, no. Don’t take offence, my dear chap. That isn’t my opinion of you. I don’t make any judgement. Far from it. I’m only telling you what Richard Parkinson happened to say one evening. However, just a few days ago, your name came back into my mind. When, due to certain circumstances, I saw that I might have need of someone in the Abbotsport Police who - what shall I say? - doesn’t possess too many scruples.’

  Jack sank back in his chair.

  No use shouting and protesting. What CI Parkinson had said was pretty much the truth, after all. Truth of one side of him.

  He waited to see what would happen next. Took a relaxing sip of his whisky. Yep, good stuff.

  ‘So then I got my good friend Anna here, who’s a very intelligent and persistent little lady, to make a few inquiries about you. Not hard to find where you lived. Not very hard to find out where your wife goes to the hairdresser. Not too hard, in fact, to get herself in the chair next to her, even if it did mean sacrificing an expensive coiffure in the hands of, Anna tells me, something of a lawnmower-wielder. In short, not very difficult to discover that you are due for retirement in a year or so, and that it’s the dearest wish of your wife to spend the rest of your joint days in an island off the coast of Malaysia called Ko Samui.’

  Christ, yes. It links up. It fucking links up. Lily and - what was it she said yesterday? - the very nice lady in the next chair at the hairdresser’s knew all about Ko Samui. No. Just this bitch here finding out all about yours truly.

  What’ve I got myself into?

  ‘I see you’re upset about all this,’ Emslie Warnaby went smoothly on. ‘I can’t say I blame you. But I hope in the end you’ll see that whatever Anna has done on my behalf will prove to be in your own best interests. You see, there’s a small task I’d like you to undertake for me. Nothing, in all probability, that should tax you unduly. But of some importance to me, and so carrying a reward. I venture to say a reward more than commensurate with what I shall ask.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  Butter wouldn’t melt … More than meets the eye here. That’s for sure.

  ‘Yes. It’s something that has arisen as a consequence of that unpleasant fellow Symes getting himself arrested. I dare say you know that the charges against him concern a variety of comparatively minor matters to do with goods obtained on behalf of the Fisheries Development Authority, where he was chief purchasing officer or something of that sort. A question of persistent falsification of documents. So, naturally, when he was arrested a large number of files were seized from his office.’

  For a moment Emslie Warnaby seemed at a loss about how to go on. His lower lip came thrusting forward as he thought.

  But he was not silent for long.

  ‘The fact of the matter is,’ he began again, ‘that among the documents seized, as Symes who is out on bail told me a few days ago in an effort to obtain financial assistance over his defence - an effort, I am afraid to say, that met with no success - among those documents is a single file of letters relating to my firm.’

  He paused again, and Jack wondered whether he was making up his mind how far he need go in saying what exactly the letters were about.

  Then, in a zip of memory, he recalled something he had happened to read in the Argus months ago. Abbotputers plc had landed, the paper had said, a contract to supply the Fisheries Development Authority with a new computer system, the one the firm’s research department had just invented.

  The Maximex System. He even remembered the name.

  And hadn’t Warnaby implied that Councillor Symes, unpleasant fellow as he’d called him, was someone who knew him well? Well enough to go asking him for ‘financial assistance’? Get hold of some expensive crafty defence counsel. So wrong ‘un Symes, very likely, knew the Abbotputers boss well enough to have been persuaded - bloody domineering Warnaby, you could just see him at it—to accept the Maximex contract for the Fisheries Development Authority without letting any other tenders go forward. Something of that sort.

  Everything beginning to add up now.

  But why was he being told about this file of letters?

  ‘Now those particular papers,’ Emslie Warnaby boomed out, ‘had no business to have been seized. They have no relevance whatsoever to the offences Symes has been charged with. However, it would be awkward—yes, that’s the word, awkward, no more - for Abbotputers if that file should chance to fall under the wrong eyes.’

  He took half a step forward. Loomed over Jack.

  ‘So this is what I want you to do. I want you to get hold of the file and bring it to me. It’s—so Symes tells me—quite a slim folder, pale blue in colour. One he bought himself for this quite private business. So the only one in the whole batch of that particular colour. You should have no difficulty in finding it—it has the word Maximex on it in Symes’s handwriting—and, when you have, it ought to be no trouble simply to take it out of the building, whatever building it is where your Fraud Investigation Branch is housed. And for that simple operation I propose to offer you a very substantial reward.’

  And, inwardly, Jack revolted.

  All very well this geezer talking about those papers having no relevance to the offences Symes is charged with. All that stuff about no business to have been seized. But it’s plain as the nose on my face he and Symesie were up to something. Both together. Getting that Maximex system approved, spite of it costing more than some rival. Be about the size of it. And if that comes out, as it’s bound to do, really, once DS MacAllister in Fraud Investigation starts beavering away, then, big boss or no big boss, Emslie Warnaby’s going to be in dead trouble.

  And serve the bugger right. What’s a fat cat like him want with even more money?

  No, all right, there may be items on my confidential record up at Force HQ, that don’t look too good. I may have done some naughty things in my time. Right up to taking that thousand off that out-and-out bad bastard Norman Teggs. But I joined the police to catch criminals, the way as a kid I caught fat Herbie Cuddy, and I’m not going to let this sodding criminal get away scot-free just because he’s got the money to lay on a big payment for me.

  No, there’s a sticking-point. There’s got to be. And this is it.

  ‘Now,’ Warnaby was going on, ‘I realize that, although there should be no great difficulty in what I have asked you to do, there is a certain risk involved. For you. Something may come out later on. I don’t think that’s at all likely, but I haven’t got to where I am by leaving out proper provision for unlikely contingencies. So I am not proposing to do anything like paying you a large sum. I imagine, in any case you would have more than a little trouble concealing any such sudden access of funds. No, I propose something altogether different.’

  And Jack knew what it was going to be.

  He almost said it out aloud, flung it into Warnaby’s face. Only, he knew at the same instant that this was something he could not fling into that face. That it was something he would have to think about.

  Something—he felt as if iron-sheeted walls were cramming him in on both sides - which he was almost certainly going to agree to.

  ‘What I propose is simply this,’ Warnaby steamrollered on. ‘I have recently been looking into a joint venture with a major concern in Singapore. I took a yachting holiday in the region last year to assess the possibilities. Arthur Symes came along as my guest, as a matter of fact, with that wife of his, and he expressed an interest then in taking over, when he left the Fisheries Development Authority, a small hotel I had purchased out there. Somewhere for my senior staff to relax. A hotel on the island of Ko Samui.’

  Yes, as he had somehow known.

  ‘Well now, there is, of course, no question any longer of Symes having the place. So I propose to make it over to you. It should give you, and y
our wife, many years of happiness and prosperity. And, of course, far away out there, complete assurance of no unpleasant proceedings arising from those matters my friend, Chief Inspector Parkinson, spoke about.’

  Chapter Six

  Caught. Jack knew he had been caught. Like a fish jerked all in a second out of the water where it had been contentedly swimming. Just because it had nosed at a tempting morsel and then snapped its jaws.

  But there was no way out now.

  Lily had gossiped to the lady in the next chair at the hairdresser’s. She would have poured out her longing for her island paradise. Ko Sammy, blast the place. And now a life out there was being put on a plate in front of him. Even if he did have the strength to chuck the plate back at Emslie Warnaby, the Abbotputers boss still had him where he wanted him. He had only to send svelte little Anna Foxton to that hairdresser again on the day of Lily’s next appointment and Lily would learn soon enough what had been offered to him. What, it would be made clear, was still on offer. And then she would beg him just to say yes. And if he said no, there’d be another long, long bed strike. Or, worse, she would tell him it would break her heart not to snatch at this gift offered them out of nowhere.

  In the end he would not be able to resist her. Not possibly.

  For a long time - or what seemed to him a long time - he sat there in the little brown armchair, the whisky he had only once sipped at untouched on the table beside him, and allowed the full misery of it all to swish like dirty washing-up water to and fro in his head.

  Then he looked up at Emslie Warnaby.

  ‘Okay,’ he said.

  ‘Good. I hoped you would see the sense of it. And, remember, there’s to be no nonsense about going off in secret to your superiors. That simply wouldn’t be practical, you know. I’ve had to allow you to become aware that I happen to be in a position I would frankly rather not be in, but your situation in my hands is hardly less uncomfortable. I would have only to say it was you who had proposed the deal to me, and with your reputation … But we won’t talk about that. You have very sensibly agreed to my proposal, and we’ll go on from there.’

  Emslie Warnaby sat down now, leant forward on the sofa with an air of colleague discussing with colleague. An informal board meeting.

  ‘There are one or two points still to clear up. First, there’s to be complete secrecy until you have handed me the file I want and have received your reward. If I get any hint that you’ve spoken to anyone, even to your wife, let me say—explain your good fortune to her afterwards in whatever manner seems best to you—I shall have no hesitation in calling the deal off and taking appropriate action. Action you would find extremely unpleasant.’

  Looking at those blunt features and the steady stare confronting him, Jack had no illusions about the ruthless measures Warnaby would take if he was crossed. Easy to see how Abbotputers had been driven over the years to where it was at the top of the tree. And, come to that, how Warnaby must have used slimy Councillor Arthur Symes as if he was no more than a piece of wet string to be tied and twisted in whatever way suited him.

  ‘I can hold my tongue if I have to,’ he answered, cursing himself at once for the abject way the words had come out.

  ‘As to the payment,’ Warnaby went on, one item on the agenda dealt with, on to the next, ‘the day I receive that file from you, you will be handed two first-class air tickets for Ko Samui together with the deeds of ownership of the Calm Seas Hotel. It’s not a big place. You should have no difficulty running it, making a reasonable living out of it.’

  ‘All right.’

  He knew he was still sounding like a whipped dog. Or, worse - the image came into his mind with piercing vividness - like some cheap criminal of the day before yesterday, cringing there in the Interview Room expecting at any moment to get a slapping.

  ‘And one final point.’ Emslie Warnaby winding up the meeting. ‘There’s a certain time factor involved. I gather from Symes that there’s no question of the proceedings against him commencing for at least three months, if only because of the sheer mass of documents he says were seized. However, from my point of view there is rather more urgency. I won’t bother you with the details. Suffice it to say my wife is due to spend her annual holiday with her parents in the south shortly, and Anna and I want to get away for a brief holiday then. So I must have the file by this day month at the very latest. The sixteenth of July, not a day later. Is that understood?’

  ‘All right.’

  But he sounded to his own ears every bit as beaten-down as before.

  He did not go straight home. He got into his car and drove - too fast, he knew - down to the bottom of the hill into the docks area. The first pub he saw, he parked and marched in.

  ‘Whisky. A double.’

  He took a deep gulp. Rot-gut it tasted like after his single sip of J&B Rare.

  The memory of that made him all the more inwardly furious.

  ‘Same again,’ he snapped at the barmaid.

  She gave him a quick, assessing look, but took his glass over to the optic and put in two more measures.

  The time it took her was just enough to let him get hold of himself. He picked up the refilled glass and carried it carefully over to a vacant table.

  But, sitting on the narrow green plastic bench there, he let his simmering rage re-occupy his whole mind.

  Why should I be caught like this just because bloody Emslie Warnaby chooses to whistle? What’ve I done to deserve it? Why should I be sent away to that sodding island after I’ve done what he wants, like a bleeding convict shipped off to Australia? Just because it suits Mr Warnaby to have me out of the way? What’s it matter to me that the fellow’s got himself in the shit over his damn blue file? Why should I have to help him climb out it?

  But all the time underneath he knew there was a chill answer to his every question. He had to do what Emslie Warnaby wanted, however much it meant he became involved in some huge shady deal, because Emslie had him by the short and curlies. He had been offered that hotel on Ko Samui, the very thing Lily had dreamt and dreamt of hopelessly. It had been put there in front of him. The big bribe, the one he had never really dared to think about, the one that would solve all the problems of a lifetime. He had to take it.

  He had been cheerful enough about passing up Jinkie Morrison’s contribution to the nest-egg when that stupid Jane Lane had mucked things up. He had even hoped, the moment after he had put Norman Teggs’s tainted money on April Fool, that he would lose it all. Somehow not have been paid off by a shitbag like that. But the offer from shitbag Warnaby was something he would not be able to refuse.

  For a few moments, though, he contemplated what it would be like if he did get on to Warnaby - ring him at his bloody Chairman’s office - and tell him he could stuff his Ko Samui hotel up his arse. Be free of it all.

  But Warnaby would simply take the action he had promised. Invent something to accuse him of? Go sneaking to that precious tenant of his, Chief Inspector Parkinson. Lay it on thick.

  Then, with the reputation he had got, listed there on his confidential record, almost for a cert he’d pretty soon find himself suspended. Might even end up, however much of a concoction Warnaby’s story against him was, wearing a tall hat again, plodding along on the beat, reduced to a constable’s pay. Even April Cottage would be out of his reach then.

  But, even if he did reject the offer and still somehow manage to stop bloody Warnaby coming down on him, in no time at all, of course, that little bitch Anna Foxton would be there smarming her way into Lily’s confidence. Would, despite Warnaby wanting complete secrecy now, tell Lily just what her husband had to do so as to get that hotel for them both. Make it sound almost nothing. And then, when he had agreed, as he could not but do in face of Lily in tears, bed privileges withdrawn once again, Warnaby would be laughing.

  And I’d be back just where I am now.

  But, if I do what Warnaby wants—when I do what Warnaby wants, how am I to go about it? I’ve only got a month, a blee
ding month, to think up some way of getting hold of that file and carrying it away. And, bugger Warnaby’s no great difficulty, doing that’ll be one hell of a problem.

  No doubt somewhere in the Fraud Investigation Branch office up at Headquarters that precious pale blue file is just lying there. For the taking. In theory. But that office, I well know, is going to be locked up solid whenever Detective Sergeant Mac MacAllister’s not sitting there like a hunched-up old watchmaker, working his way through his papers and figures, building up his cases for the Crown Court. So what possible chance is there of even setting eyes on the file? Let alone of waltzing off with it, bold as brass, out of Headquarters?

  All very well for bloody Warnaby to talk about a simple operation, but it ain’t bloody simple. In any way. It’s near enough fucking impossible.

  He found he had not touched his second whisky. And that he did not even want it.

  He stood up, feeling his body like a sodden sack hanging from his shoulders, and made his way out. Good thing, probably, not to have gulped down that second double. Be just his luck to be stopped by some PC fresh out of Mansfield, waving his breathalyser like a bloody kiddy’s toy. Totally deaf to any attempt to work the old pals’ act.

  And at home he would have to stop himself saying a word to Lil.

  Waking early next morning and lying there wishing he would never have to get up, suddenly a possibility appeared in his mind. A little scene between himself and Mac MacAllister. A conversation in which he would - details were vague - end up knowing exactly the whereabouts of that blue folder Emslie Warnaby was prepared to pay so much for.

  Coming nearer to common-sense daylight, he lay on, thinking about the notion his half-awake brain had put in front of him. It seemed too good to be true. Somewhere, surely, the plan would go off the rails, the rails he had seen, as he woke, running glistening away into the happy distance. There would turn out to be some total logical impossibility somewhere. Bound to be.