Gunrunner Read online

‘Er, yes, exactly.’ Simpson seemed mildly irritated that I’d seen through his euphemism. ‘He’s engaged in very important work.’

  I told Simpson about the two shifty Arabian characters that Charlie Flynn had seen entering Hammond’s Mayfair estate agency.

  ‘Good God!’ exclaimed Simpson, clearly appalled, ‘d’you mean you’ve been keeping observation on the place.’

  ‘It’s standard practice,’ commented the DAC, hiding a smile, ‘and in all fairness, Mr Brock knew nothing of Hammond’s background until now.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said the unhappy Simpson. ‘But I’d deem it a great favour if you discontinued the observation.’

  ‘I’ve done so already,’ I said. ‘But my officers got the impression that Hammond’s business is a bit of a front.’ It was a comment that seemed to discomfit Simpson even further.

  ‘D’you think Hammond’s up for this topping, Harry?’ asked the DAC, clearly enjoying the difficulty in which Simpson found himself.

  ‘I don’t honestly know at this stage, sir. He didn’t seem too cut up about the death of his wife, and he went off to New York on Christmas Eve without waiting to find out what had happened to her. In fact, to the best of our knowledge she was already lying dead in one of the airport car parks.’

  ‘He had to go to New York, Mr Brock,’ put in Simpson. ‘There was no way he could not have gone. I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘Over Christmas?’ I said. ‘Another meeting with the American spooks at Langley, Virginia, I suppose.’ I now assumed that Hammond’s excuse of ‘closing a deal’ had nothing to do with buying and selling houses.

  ‘Quite so,’ muttered Simpson, who seemed unhappy that I was aware of the location of the CIA, despite it being widely publicized. But I got the impression that he was the sort of guy who’d lock a newspaper in his safe if MI5 was mentioned in its pages. And I noticed that he’d readily agreed that Hammond had met with the CIA, even though Langley, in Virginia, was at least three hundred miles from New York. But I didn’t suppose that Simpson’s circumspection affected my enquiry.

  ‘I think we’ve just made your job harder than it was already, Harry,’ said the DAC, ‘but if you come up against any insurmountable problems, let me know, and I’ll see what can be done. And if you get to the point where you intend charging Hammond with his wife’s murder, I’d be grateful if you’d let me know before you nick him. Not that his current employment will make any difference. He wouldn’t be the first MI5 officer to grip the dock rail at the Old Bailey.’ It was a throwaway line that caused Simpson to frown.

  ‘Of course, sir,’ I said. ‘Incidentally, I’ve learned that on at least a couple of occasions his wife injected some capital into this estate agency that Hammond’s running.’

  ‘That’s easily explained, Mr Brock,’ said Simpson smoothly. ‘It was all part of the cover, in case anyone looked into the background of his business. It would make it seem more genuine, you see.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said, but as a simple policeman, I failed to see the logic of that. Surely to God, if any financial shoring up was required, the secret fund would be able to provide it and keep it secret. But who am I to understand such arcane matters?

  ‘And one other thing, Harry,’ said the DAC. ‘I must remind you once again that nothing you’ve heard in this office is to be passed on to any other person at all. And that includes your commander. Understood?’

  ‘Absolutely, sir.’ The DAC’s embargo on telling the commander was about the only thing to emerge from the interview that gave me any pleasure. I stood up to leave.

  ‘And a Happy New Year, Harry,’ said the DAC, and laughed.

  SEVEN

  When I got back to Curtis Green, the commander was hovering in his doorway. It was a most unusual sight and one that underlined his curiosity about my visit to the Yard.

  ‘Come in, Mr Brock, and close the door. Now, what was this interview with the DAC Counter Terrorism all about, eh?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m under strict orders from the DAC personally not to divulge anything about it to anyone, sir.’

  The commander afforded me a strained smile. ‘Yes, but that doesn’t include me, surely?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, the DAC made a particular point of saying that you were not be told, sir.’ Although I derived some satisfaction from that, I was fairly certain that I’d be the one on the receiving end of the commander’s wrath. If not today, then certainly later on.

  ‘But that’s absolutely preposterous, Mr Brock.’ The commander’s face reddened quite noticeably. ‘I’m sure you must have got that wrong. The DAC couldn’t possibly have said such a thing. Does he think I’m not to be trusted?’ Suddenly he realized that he was implying criticism of a senior officer to a junior one. ‘I’m sure you must have misunderstood the direction, Mr Brock,’ he said, hurriedly backtracking. ‘I shall speak to the DAC immediately.’ And with that, he waved an imperious hand of dismissal. He was, to use one of Kate Ebdon’s favourite phrases, not a happy bunny.

  Understandably, I never learned the details of the commander’s conversation with the DAC, but it was apparent that from that day forth he seemed to lose interest in the murder of Kerry Hammond.

  I returned to my office, shouting for Dave on the way.

  ‘Yes, guv?’

  ‘Shut the door and sit down, Dave.’

  ‘Sounds serious,’ said Dave, sprawling in my only armchair. ‘Not a complaint, is it?’

  ‘We’ve got a problem,’ I said, ignoring Dave’s question. Despite the DAC’s prohibition, I’d decided that I could not keep this information from Dave, and I told him what had taken place at the Yard.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed Dave. ‘That’s going to make life a bit difficult.’

  ‘If Hammond’s our man it means that we’ll have to be very circumspect in our dealings with him. No obos, no interviews in a nick. Which leaves us with talking to him on his own turf, and that always puts us at a disadvantage.’

  ‘Perhaps we ought to pursue the other suspects first, guv.’

  ‘Agreed. But right now, the most pressing job is to get a sight of Kerry Hammond’s last will and testament. That might steer us in the right direction. And we need to speak to Gary Dixon sooner rather than later.’

  ‘We’ve got to find him first, guv.’

  ‘We’ll leave that to Miss Ebdon for the time being,’ I said, ‘but first there is the question of Mrs Hammond’s will.’

  I telephoned Bernard Bligh at Kerry Trucking and asked him for the name of the company solicitor. After querying why I wanted to know, and getting no answer, Bligh furnished the name of the lawyer and told me that she had offices in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

  I was expecting to be greeted by a horse-faced harridan, but Kerry Trucking’s solicitor was a striking young blonde, a first in my experience of the legal profession.

  The solicitor’s secretary, who looked old enough to be the lawyer’s mother, served coffee.

  ‘And now tell me how may I help you, gentlemen,’ said the lawyer, once the secretary had left the office.

  ‘Did you draw up a last will and testament for Mrs Kerry Hammond, the managing director of Kerry Trucking?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I did, but what’s your interest?’

  ‘I’m investigating her murder.’

  ‘Yes, of course. A tragic event. Mrs Hammond had a lot to live for.’ The solicitor spoke to her secretary on the office intercom and asked for Kerry’s will. Minutes later, the document was placed on the lawyer’s desk.

  ‘What exactly did you want to know, Chief Inspector?’ Having spent a few minutes reading the document, the solicitor looked up.

  ‘The names of the main beneficiaries,’ I said.

  ‘There’s only one: Nicholas Hammond, Kerry Hammond’s husband. Everything goes to him: the business, the house in Barnes, the one in France, and a considerable sum of money.’ The lawyer paused and glanced at the document again. ‘The last estimate put the entire estate somewhere in the
region of twenty million pounds, give or take a few million,’ she added with a smile.

  ‘Interesting,’ I said, in the absence of anything more constructive to say.

  ‘Does that provide you with a motive, Mr Brock?’

  ‘It might,’ I said cautiously. ‘As a matter of interest, where is this house in France?’

  The solicitor glanced at the will again. ‘It’s in St-Tropez, in the rue Gambetta. A very upmarket property, I should imagine. D’you know St-Tropez, at all?’

  ‘No, I can’t say that I do.’

  ‘I do,’ said Dave. ‘Madeleine and I spent a holiday there a few years ago.’

  The solicitor regarded Dave with renewed interest, but said nothing. Perhaps she thought that he was bent; that’s what most lawyers think about policemen who appear to be living above their means.

  ‘Is Mr Hammond aware of the contents of his wife’s will?’ I asked.

  ‘Almost certainly, Mr Brock. She asked specifically that a copy should be sent to him when it was drawn up.’

  That too was interesting; Hammond told us he knew nothing about it. It must’ve been the old MI5 secrecy kicking in.

  ‘Would Bernard Bligh have been made aware of the contents of the will?’

  ‘I certainly haven’t told him, but maybe Kerry Hammond did.’

  ‘Would you have any objection to my telling him?’

  ‘Not at all, but remember that it has yet to go to probate. Is there anything else you’d like to know?’

  ‘Not at present, no,’ I said, ‘but I may have to come back to you.’

  ‘Fine. You can always email me, of course, if it’ll save you a visit.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I forbore from saying that I wasn’t into emailing.

  ‘Well, Dave,’ I said, once we were back at Curtis Green, ‘that rather points a finger at Nicholas Hammond.’

  ‘So he knew about the will, despite having denied all knowledge of it.’

  ‘So it would seem, but perhaps secrecy comes naturally to him.’

  ‘I reckon Kerry’s topping’s got to be down to him, guv.’

  ‘It’s beginning to look that way, although how the hell we’re going to prove it without having him into the nick, I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I know what I’d do,’ said Dave. ‘I’d nick him and let the secret squirrel you saw across at the Yard pick the bones out of that. Anyway,’ he added, ‘I thought that MI5 weren’t supposed to operate outside the UK, but you said that he’d been to the States to talk to the CIA.’

  ‘There are a lot of things they’re not supposed to do, Dave, but it doesn’t stop them.’

  ‘There are a lot of things we’re not supposed to do, either,’ said Dave, ‘but we do them. Like nicking people on suspicion whether they’re spies or not.’

  ‘If only it was that easy, Dave,’ I said.

  ‘There is another aspect, guv,’ said Dave thoughtfully. ‘Given the possibility that Bligh is ignorant of the will’s contents, he might’ve been under the impression that he was going to get the company when Kerry died. And that would make for a motive.’

  ‘Yeah maybe, Dave, but we’ve got to find some solid evidence.’

  I was surprised that we had managed to achieve so much, given that it was New Year’s Eve. Britain grinds to a standstill between the twenty-fourth of December and the second of January, or even longer if our revered government has thrown in an extra bank holiday or two. Consequently, it’s a miracle that anything at all gets done.

  I decided that I couldn’t do a lot more on New Year’s Day, so I didn’t try. Instead, I spent a lazy day with Gail, drinking too much and eating too much.

  On the Thursday morning, however, I resolved to speak to Bernard Bligh again, mainly to see his reaction to the news that his new boss was to be Nicholas Hammond.

  ‘There can’t be anything else you want to know, surely?’ Bligh’s reaction to our visit was a little more wary than hitherto, and I wondered whether it was because he’d had something to do with Kerry’s death.

  ‘Not at the moment, no.’ Dave and I accepted Bligh’s invitation to sit down in his pokey little office. ‘I was wondering whether you’d heard about Mrs Hammond’s will.’

  Bligh’s eyes narrowed. ‘What about it?’

  ‘It seems that Nicholas Hammond gets everything, and that of course includes the control of this company.’

  For a few moments, Bligh stared at me, stunned by the disastrous news I’d just given him. ‘I don’t bloody believe it,’ he said eventually. ‘Kerry wouldn’t do something like that to me. Are you absolutely sure, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘I spoke to the company solicitor the day before yesterday, and she assures me that Nicholas Hammond is the sole beneficiary of his wife’s will.’

  Bligh shook his head in disbelief. ‘But Kerry told me that if anything happened to her, and that included serious illness, she would hand the company over to me. She always looked to the future, even though she was in the best of health.’ He pulled open a drawer in his desk and took out a bottle of whisky. He poured a substantial measure of Scotch into a glass and drank it down neat. ‘Oh, would you like a drink?’ he asked, as an obvious afterthought.

  ‘No thanks.’ It’s a fallacy that policemen don’t drink on duty, and I’m not usually averse to accepting one, but I make it a practice never to drink with suspects. And right now, Bligh was beginning to look that way.

  ‘I helped Dick Lucas build up this business from scratch, you know, Mr Brock.’ Bligh poured more whisky into his glass and stared at it moodily. ‘In fact, we worked at it together, driving our first two trucks ourselves, and working our damned fingers to the bone. Every day and every hour that God gave. And this is all the thanks I get for it. It was bad enough when Dick died and left the company to Kerry, but at least she made a good fist of running it. But Nick Hammond’ll spend all the profits and run it into the ground. That guy is a tosser, pure and simple.’

  There was something at the back of my mind that told me that he and Thorpe could, should they so desire, take legal proceedings to have Nicholas Hammond removed as managing director. Especially if his stewardship proved to be detrimental to the running of the company. But I kept my silence; I know very little of civil law. No doubt the company solicitor would advise them, for a hefty fee.

  ‘Where were you on Christmas Eve?’ asked Dave.

  The suddenness of the question caught Bligh unawares. ‘Er, Christmas Eve. I was, um . . . yes, of course, I was at home with the wife.’

  ‘Wrapping the kids’ Christmas presents no doubt,’ suggested Dave.

  ‘We don’t have any children,’ responded Bligh sharply. ‘Anne and I have tried, but it was no good. We’re thinking of trying the IVF programme now, or even adoption.’

  ‘Were you at home all day?’ Dave was not greatly interested in Mrs Bligh’s childbearing problems.

  ‘Until the evening, yes. We had the usual Christmas party at The Bull, the pub round the corner from here. We hold it there every Christmas Eve, in a big private room upstairs. It’s a way of saying thank you to all the boys and girls who work for us, but I think it’ll probably be the last one.’

  ‘Why is that?’ asked Dave.

  ‘It’s the recession, of course,’ said Bligh, as though the answer was obvious. ‘The state of the economy means that we have to watch every penny.’

  ‘Presumably there were people at this party who saw you there,’ said Dave.

  ‘My wife was with me, along with Carl Thorpe and his missus,’ said Bligh, ‘and there were about eighty others,’ he added, somewhat sarcastically. ‘They’ll vouch for me if necessary, but I hope you’re not thinking that I had anything to do with Kerry’s murder.’

  ‘Where d’you live, Mr Bligh?’ Dave asked the question casually, as if he were collecting inconsequential information.

  ‘Hatton. Carmen Avenue. I’ve always thought that Carmen Avenue is a suitable sort of name for a road that a haulier lives in, don’t you think?’ Bligh
gave a nervous laugh.

  Dave made a note in his pocketbook, but said nothing. He didn’t have to; we both knew that Hatton was practically within walking distance of Heathrow Airport.

  ‘I’ve no doubt that both the company solicitor and Mr Hammond will be in touch with you shortly to finalize details, Mr Bligh,’ I said. With that we left Bernard Bligh to mull over a future under the thumb of Nicholas Hammond. As we got into the car, Dave gave voice to what I was thinking.

  ‘I reckon we might have another murder on our hands before long, guv, once Hammond starts interfering.’

  ‘One’s enough,’ I said. ‘But while we’re in the area, we’ll pop into The Bull and check Bligh’s alibi.’

  The bottle-blonde barmaid was definitely in her forties, but probably claimed to be forever thirty-something, and had the appearance of a resting soap actress: curvaceous and brassy.

  ‘What can I get you, love?’

  ‘The licensee, if he’s around,’ I said. ‘But in the meantime, I’ll have a pint of best bitter, and my friend here will have an orange squash.’

  ‘On the wagon, then, is he?’ asked the barmaid.

  ‘No, he’s driving.’

  The barmaid, whose name tag proclaimed her to be Yvonne, laughed. ‘I shouldn’t worry, love. You never see a copper round here.’

  ‘Well, today’s your lucky day,’ said Dave. ‘You’ve found two now.’

  ‘Oh! That’s nice.’ Yvonne served our drinks. ‘I’ll see if the guv’nor’s about.’

  Moments later, a dapper individual appeared behind the bar. He was short, slightly built, and his black hair was heavily greased so that it lay flat on his head, giving him the appearance of a gigolo rather than a pub landlord, an impression enhanced by his pencil-thin moustache. He certainly had the look of a sickeningly enthusiastic ballroom dancer.

  ‘I’m the licensee, gentlemen. Yvonne tells me you’re from the police. There isn’t any trouble, I hope.’

  ‘We haven’t found any yet, Mr . . .?’ Dave opened his pocketbook and waggled his pen.

  ‘Mr Butler.’

  ‘First name?’

  ‘Reginald. Reginald Butler.’