Mad About the Boy? (34 page)

‘We'll get these crates unloaded,' Haldean heard Charnock say, ‘then go back for the rest.'

Charnock, the Slav and the boat crews started to unload the boxes from the wagon and pile them on the sand.

Ashley gave a glance at Haldean, drew out his police whistle and gave a piercing blast. At once the beach was full of shouts and men running to surround the wagon. Burrows lashed out and was brought down by a truncheon on his shoulder. The Slav leapt back defensively, was caught by two policemen, struggling as handcuffs were snapped round his wrists. The boat crews, for the most part, stood bewildered by the pile of boxes. Alfred Charnock drew a revolver.

‘Now then, my lad, none of that!' Ashley brought his stick crashing down on his arm, sending the gun flying. Charnock nursed his arm, looking at the policeman in disgust. ‘I suppose I'm meant to say, “The game's up.”' Then he caught sight of Haldean. ‘You! My God, I might have known you'd be involved.'

Haldean said nothing.

Ashley wasn't having it. ‘Shut up, Charnock. You can have your say afterwards. Get those boxes open, men.'

Charnock went for his jacket pocket. Ashley started forward. ‘Don't be so edgy, officer,' said Charnock smoothly. ‘I'm only getting a cigarette. And please address me as
Mr
Charnock.' He drew out his case and struck a match. ‘Why don't you ask your friend, Jack the lad there, to tell you what we're shipping?'

‘It's my guess the boxes contain arms,' said Haldean in a controlled voice. ‘Ah, I see they do.' The lids had been crowbarred off and the inner tarpaulin ripped open, revealing an array of gun barrels, gleaming in the moonlight. He stooped down and picked one out. ‘And they come from Lyvenden's factory.'

‘Perhaps you can tell me where they're going?' drawled Charnock, pulling on his cigarette.

‘Ireland, at a guess,' said Ashley.

‘Ireland!' Charnock looked genuinely amused. ‘No, we're going a little further afield than that. Try Yalta.'

Haldean stared at him. ‘What? In the Black Sea?'

‘Congratulations. Ten out ten for geographical knowledge.'

‘Are you supplying the Reds?' asked Ashley.

‘As if,' drawled Charnock. ‘Wrong side, my dear man.'

Haldean paused, gun in hand.' You're taking them to the Ukraine, aren't you? Where you were in the war. These are for the White Russians. I bet you're getting a handsome profit.'

‘Naturally. Well done. I see I can't put anything past you.'

‘But what the dickens is it all about?' demanded Ashley. ‘If you want to ship guns to the Ukraine why are you doing it in this hole-in-a-corner way? Why all the secrecy?'

Charnock smiled. ‘It makes life more exciting?' Ashley snorted. ‘No, I can see you won't buy that. However, it does raise the interesting question of what I'm actually meant to be guilty of, doesn't it, officer?'

‘Damn me, I'll get you under the Firearms Act if I can't get you for anything else,' said Ashley pugnaciously.

Charnock's smile flickered for a moment. ‘Yes, there is that,' he said, in the tone of one approving a good stroke by his opponent on the cricket field. ‘Yes, I must admit you've got me there. I must admit that piece of petty legislation hadn't actually crossed my mind.'

‘It's going to occupy it extensively soon,' said Ashley grimly. ‘Alfred Charnock –
Mr
Charnock – I arrest you on the charge of holding arms without a licence as prohibited by the provisions of the Firearms Act 1920. You do not need to say anything, but anything you do say may be used in a court of law. In fact, my lad,' he added with great satisfaction, ‘you're nicked.'

The next morning, Superintendent Ashley had a long interview with Sir Philip and Lady Rivers. Haldean, waiting in the hall for his telephone call to King Edward's Hospital to be put through, gave him the thumbs-up sign as he walked past. After half an hour Ashley sought out his friend who had migrated to the stone seat on the terrace.

Haldean put down his newspaper, offered Ashley a cigarette and, like a conjuror producing a rabbit from a hat, brought out a quart bottle of beer and two glasses from under the seat. ‘I thought you might need a spot of something,' he said with a grin, ‘so I laid in supplies.'

Ashley poured a beer and took a much-needed drink. ‘My word, I'm glad that's over. As you know, I've got a great respect for your aunt and, despite what I think of Charnock, he is her stepbrother, after all. You'd told them what had happened, I gather.'

‘Yes.'Haldean sat back thoughtfully. ‘Aunt Alice took it pretty hard. That's only natural, of course. I broke the news first thing this morning and it wasn't at all nice. She knew Charnock was always on the windy side of the law but this time he could end up in quod.'

Ashley pulled a face. ‘He probably won't, more's the pity. Between you and me, I'd love to see him behind bars for no other reason than to wipe the smile off his face, but a decent barrister could probably get him off, worse luck.'

‘And I suppose poor old Uncle Phil will have to foot the bill. Still, it should put a crimp in Mr Charnock treating the place like a home from home. Uncle Phil won't stand for that any longer.'

‘What beats me,' said Ashley, finishing his beer, ‘– is there any more in that bottle, by the way? Thanks – is why Charnock couldn't get the correct licences and do the thing openly instead of all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. I was convinced he was shipping arms to Ireland but those weapons really were destined for the Ukraine, you know. I still can't understand why he needed to shroud himself in so much secrecy.'

‘Well, he'd have had to apply for a gun licence, of course,' said Haldean. ‘And with his record there's absolutely no guarantee he'd have got one. The Ukrainians probably wanted it kept as much undercover as possible so as not to alert the Moscow authorities. And then again, when you consider who the arms were destined for, I can't see Lyvenden being too anxious to explain things to his associates.'

Ashley smacked his knee. ‘That's it! That'd scuttle the whole show before he'd got it off the ground.'

‘So come on, Ashley, tell me all the juicy details. What's happened to the ship?'

‘That's in our hands. There wasn't any trouble about that, especially as most of the crew were on the beach. No, it all ended fairly tamely and Charnock, Burrows and the crew are all safely in custody in Lewes. To be honest, I imagine we'll end up letting the foreigners go but I'd love to nail Charnock and Burrows. Anyway, this smuggling racket has been going on for months. Charnock was in control of things on this side. He'd order the arms from Lyvenden, and Lyvenden would supply them on the QT. He'd dispatch a lorry-load of arms from Birmingham once a month and they were stored in those garages of Burrows' until they could be shipped across to the Ukraine. Incidentally, listening to your uncle on the subject of Lord Lyvenden was interesting.'

‘I bet it was,' said Haldean with a grin. ‘I never could make out what he saw in him. Go on.'

‘How it worked was like this. A large amount of money was paid to Lyvenden in January. That was followed by a regular payment every month. The Birmingham police are checking all this, but that's more or less what happened. That white-haired bloke who came to the ball – his name's Volodymir Ferencz, by the way, if I've pronounced that right – is first mate on the Ukrainian ship. Anyway, there should have been a shipment on Saturday, the night of the ball, but things went badly wrong. There was a fire in the engine room and the captain was injured, so they had to limp round to Newhaven for repairs. Ferencz was sent to tell Charnock, who went to see for himself, which is why he came back here late and wet through. Ferencz has been dividing his time between Newhaven and the Pig and Whistle where he met up with Charnock. We followed him back to the ship, made enquiries and found that the work was due to be finished yesterday. I knew they needed high tide to get the ship in to the beach, so when I looked up my tide-tables and found that high water was at three this morning, I thought we could make a pretty good guess as to when everything was going to happen.'

‘This is brilliant stuff, Ashley,' said Haldean. ‘How did Charnock come to be involved?'

Ashley filled his pipe reflectively. ‘He knew the Ukrainian captain, an Andriy Dobryrnin, who was in charge of the other end of the operation. We've got Captain Dobryrnin in hospital and I saw him first thing this morning. I've got a lot of sympathy for him. His wife and children were massacred by the Bolshies and his home destroyed. He was left for dead, but when he eventually recovered, he wanted to start his own private war. They're not exactly pro-Moscow in those parts, so he had a lot of support. He contacted our friend Alfred, who he'd worked with in the war, and, as it happened, came as the answer to Charnock's prayers. Charnock had got badly involved in one of Lyvenden's schemes last year and couldn't pay up. He offered Lyvenden the chance to export arms at a fair old profit and Lyvenden agreed. Charnock, of course, creamed off a handsome take. To give him his due, his part worked like clockwork. They used the Pig and Whistle as a meeting place. It's pretty isolated and no one noticed a thing until our attention was drawn to it, as you might say.'

Haldean poured another glass of beer for them both. ‘It'd be better for Aunt Alice if he could get away with it, I suppose, but I bet he won't dare show his face near my uncle for a long time to come. I'm not surprised you're pleased with yourself. Here's to.'

Ashley smiled and raised his glass. ‘What have you got to tell me? Do you know how Commander Smith-Fennimore is getting on?'

‘He's doing fine. I rang the hospital and was able to talk to the doctor who's looking after him. He should be discharged tomorrow morning. I presume he'll be coming back here. In fact, he's almost bound to come back here.' He paused. ‘He nearly went west, you know,' he added thoughtfully. ‘We really did get there just in time. If he'd died . . .' He shook himself. ‘Anyway, after that, I spoke to Bill Rackham about Gerasimov's knife. He's left an official message for you at the station, but the gist of it is that we were right.'

Ashley raised his eyebrows. ‘You were right, you mean.' He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘That changes things. That changes things quite a bit.'

‘Yes . . . What d'you think?'

Ashley sat back and didn't say anything for quite a time. ‘I'm satisfied,' he said eventually. ‘But I know I won't be able to convince the Chief. As I said last night, if only Stanton could remember what actually happened, it'd help.'

‘It might,' said Haldean. ‘Though I'm not all that convinced it would.' He bit his lip. ‘Look, will you telephone Lady Harriet? She wouldn't talk to me, but she might speak to you. We could do with knowing what she really was doing on the morning Lyvenden was killed. I can guess but I'd like to be sure. After that . . .' He paused. ‘What we need now is a confession. Anything which backed it up would be a bonus.'

‘Well, I could have told you that,' said Ashley blankly.

Haldean gave a fleeting grin. ‘Don't worry. I'm not being as dopey as I sound. I've got an idea . . .'

A couple of hours later Haldean walked into the summerhouse. Isabelle was in there, an open book face down on the bench beside her. ‘Hello,' he said. ‘I didn't know you were in here.'

‘I was just thinking things through.' She watched curiously as her cousin started to poke around under the bench that ran round the wall. ‘Jack, what are you doing?'

‘I was looking for a plant pot or something.'

‘Why don't you try the potting shed?'

‘I can't. It's full of gardeners and so on. Ideally, I want an undisturbed plant pot or a Greek urn or something like that.' He stood up and looked round the summerhouse in a dissatisfied way. ‘The trouble is, on the one hand, this place is perfect. It's far enough from the house so no one need see anyone coming or going but there's a very convenient shrubbery within sight. On the other hand, it's a bit bare.'

‘There's a table, a bench and an oil lamp. What else do you want?' She stopped. ‘I know. A plant pot.'

‘The lamp certainly isn't much use,' he said, picking it up. He stepped back and a floorboard creaked under his foot. ‘Ah!'

He knelt on the floor and took his knife from his pocket. Wincing slightly, he opened the blade. ‘My arm's improving,' he said cheerfully ‘I couldn't have done that a couple of days ago.' He ran the knife round the floorboard. ‘This sounded very promising . . . Bingo!' He pressed down on one end of the board. The other end rose and he pulled it loose, revealing an empty space beneath. ‘Wonderful,' he said with deep satisfaction, kneeling down and peering into the hole. ‘Do you know, it's all matchboarded under here?' he said in a muffled voice. ‘It makes a very nice space. Excellent.' He replaced the board and sat back on his heels.

Isabelle was watching him with amused interest. ‘Are you going to tell me why you're ripping up the floorboards?'

Haldean scratched his nose. ‘To be honest, I don't think I'd better. Sorry, old thing. Not yet, anyway. Er . . . there's no need to tell anyone what I've been doing.' He stood up and took out his cigarette case, offering it to her.

‘Thanks,' she said abstractedly. ‘I'll add it to my list of things I mustn't mention. Have you finished your excavations?'

‘Yes,' he said, dusting off his knees. He struck a match for her cigarette and she leaned forward thoughtfully.

‘Jack, I've been to see Arthur. He says there's some sort of scheme to bring him up here tomorrow.'

‘That's right. The idea is to try and give his memory a jolt.'

Isabelle pulled a face. ‘There's a whole lot I could do with him forgetting. How I kept him on a string, for instance. I can't believe I treated him like that.'